I’ve been working (all day, every day) on the OUP edition of The House of Mirth for The Collected Works of Edith Wharton and have been writing short posts about it to Facebook & now here. Here’s the first one (below), but I’ve already expressed, um, some feelings about Lawrence Selden here:

Lawrence Selden: A Cad among Men

Collating variants for The House of Mirth means going word by word, comma by comma, so I’m basically living this book inside my head. This struck me today: Lily Bart goes to two houses in the last few chapters.

Selden: “let me get you some tea & stand across the room, judging your cold, thin ‘curves.'”

Nettie Struther: “Are you cold, Miss Bart? Want some tea with milk? We love you here in my warm kitchen.”

I wanted to stab Selden in Chapter 12, and now I want to stab him more in Chapter 13.