EARLY ON in the recent romantic comedy Austenland, a sad single woman named Jane, played by Keri Russell, reveals the depths of her shame to a tsk-tsking married friend: the Austen Room. Inside this shrine she stores teacups, portraits of film ...

EDITH WHARTON’S NOVELS VACILLATE between snide gossip and heart-wrenching insight, between the affirmation of a social hierarchy and a lament that said hierarchy crushes its adherents’ spirits. It naturally follows, then, that contemporary heirs to her oeuvre have ...