Constance Fenimore Woolson and Edith Wharton

"The first study to draw connections between Constance Fenimore Woolson and Edith Wharton, this book explores the contrasting ways in which these two important writers responded to the rapidly changing landscapes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sharon L. Dean considers the travel essays of Woolson and Wharton, as well as their fiction, and contextualizes their work with the rise in tourism and with evolving theories and techniques of landscape design. She argues that for both writers, the manner in which they saw and transcribed landscape informed their ways of seeing themselves as artists." "Full of fresh insights into the literary achievements of both Woolson and Wharton, Dean's book will also prompt readers to reconsider their own responses and obligations to landscape and how those responses are shaped by their experiences and by larger cultural forces."--BOOK JACKET.