20 NOVEMBER 1953, Page 64

Edith Wharton. By Blake Nevius. (Cam- bridge University Press. 28s.)

PAINSTAKING account of Edith Wharton's writing (not her life). Edith Wharton is such a good writer, and so stupidly neglected, that any criticism is better than none, and there are good points in Mr. Nevius's. But he is too anxious to bring her into relation with her contemporaries, altogether too preoccupied with the present stereotypes of American academic criticism. Edith Whar- ton is very much a solitary artist, and could stand a searching, deep, individual critical investigation, such as Mrs. Q. D. Leavis could have brought to bear.

C. P. S.