1. Wharton, Edith The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton, introduction by R.W.B. Lewis, 2 Vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968) p. 197.
2. Kaplan, Amy The Social Construction of American Realism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 65–66.
3. Susan Goodman in her essay ‘Edith Wharton’s Inner Circle’, in Joslin, Katherine and Alan Price (eds) Wretched Exotic: Essays on Edith Wharton in Europe (New York: Lang, 1993), sees ‘All Souls’ as being essentially concerned with ‘the loneliness of being the “extraordinary” woman’ (p. 57), drawing a comparison between Wharton’s position amongst the friendship group she calls ‘the inner circle’ and the situation of Sara Clayburn in the story.
4. Gloria Erlich in The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992) considers ‘All Souls’ to be an expression of the ‘terror of abandonment’ (p. 167). Erlich draws a comparison with Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’ but concentrates on an interpretation which has the story mirroring Wharton’s own situation as she nears the end of her life in a position of increasing isolation.
5. Candace Waid in Edith Wharton’s Letters from the Underworld (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) also suggests that ‘a self-portrait of Wharton at the end of her life’ (p. 175) can be discerned in the story.