A PLAY by one of America’s leading writers has been re-discovered by a University of Glasgow academic more than 100 years after it was written.
Edith Wharton, who penned literary classics such as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, composed the forgotten work – centred on themes of sickness and euthanasia – in 1901 but it has never been listed in any major biographies of the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist
The remarkable literary discovery marks the first time a complete original play by Wharton has surfaced. Other unfinished works and typescripts held in the archives at Yale University have previously come to light.
Entitled The Shadow of a Doubt, the manuscript had been gathering dust among other papers in Texas when it was unearthed by Dr Laura Rattray, of Glasgow University, and Professor Mary Chinery, of Georgian Court University.
The play – set in England and sees a happily married couple begin to fall apart– was found in the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Texas in Austin, home to a collection of Wharton’s papers.
Dr Rattray, a reader in North American Literature, said she would like to see it performed in Scotland, and already moves are afoot to have the play performed in the US, either on stage or with a rehearsed reading.
“It would be wonderful to see a Scottish public performance,” she said.
“It is a very interesting piece, her play writing is not as well known as her novels, it has not been talked about much – even in her memoirs she did not talk much about them, perhaps because they were not a success.
“One of the main characters, Kate, loses her position in society and you can definitely see the links to Wharton’s later work, such as The House of Mirth.”
She added: “After all this time, nobody thought there were long, full scale, completed, original, professional works by Wharton still out there that we didn’t know about. But evidently there are.
“In 2017 Edith Wharton continues to surprise.”
Dr Rattray and Professor Chinery have also been able to establish that ‘The Shadow of a Doubt’ was not only completed, but in production by early 1901 with theatrical impresario Charles Frohman, and with Elsie de Wolfe in the leading role.
“The late 19th and early years of the 20th century cover a pivotal, formative period of Wharton’s career, about which scholars still have less information than they would like,” Dr Rattray added.
“Well before the publication of her first novel, we can now ascertain that Wharton was establishing herself as a playwright, deeply engaged in both the creative and business aspects of the theatre - playwriting more important to her at this time than establishing herself as a novelist.
“Yet the discovery of ‘The Shadow of a Doubt’ also develops new thinking and proves of profound influence on our understanding of Wharton’s work as a novelist.”
The story follows a nurse named Kate Derwent whose marriage runs into trouble when her husband learns that she helped his injured first wife die.
The consequences of her actions not only threaten her social standing but also threaten a once loving relationship when her husband refused to believe that she acted out of pity instead of malice.
Wharton who lived from 1862 to 1937 was known for her society commentary, among her most well known works were ‘The Age of Innocence’, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, ‘The House of Mirth’, and ‘Ethan Frome’. She was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 2015, it was reported that another Wharton treasure had been found at Yale University written on the back of another manuscript.
The story, entitled "The Field of Honor," was found on the back side of another manuscript by Alice Kelly, a writing fellow at Oxford who was looking through Wharton's papers while researching a book. Six of the story's pages were typed, Garber writes, and the last three consist of cobbled-together strips of paper and fragments of writing.
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