Reviews Outside the Usual Places: Daily Newspaper Reviews of Edith Wharton in Edwardian Britain

Abstract

ABSTRACT The accessibility of digitized newspapers creates an opportunity to trace middlebrow taste. This article does so by analyzing how the style and substance of newspaper reviews began to diverge from magazine reviews late in the nineteenth century. Newspaper reviews became short, chatty, personal, and targeted toward the leisured reader. Self-consciously, reviewers mourned unhappy endings, complained about long factual expositions, and criticized plots on the grounds of implausibility. This shift in critical discourse is seen when comparing British newspaper and magazine reviews from the mid-nineteenth century to reviews of Edith Wharton’s early short story collections, The House of Mirth, and Ethan Frome.