After the War, 1919–1924

The years immediately following World War One brought Edith mainly loss, with the deaths of her father in 1918, of her sister Ethel and Uncle Sam in 1919, and of John Burroughs in 1921. As this chapter indicates too, these years also left Edith very uncertain about her own future. She drafted stories and novels. She prepared textbooks and Readers. She reviewed for the New Republic. She successfully tried her hand at children’s books. Most importantly, in hopes of an appointment at the University of Chicago she also produced academic articles and what would become Chaucer’s World (posthumously published in 1948). Finally she was appointed an Associate Professor in the University’s Department of English in August 1924. She was fifty-three years old.