Later Fiction

In 1927 Edith and Richard H. Thornton (1889–1977) of Henry Holt & Co. discussed a collection of some fifty of her stories under the title “Small Affairs.” It never materialized, probably because of the 1929 stock-market crash. Nor did a collection of seven short pieces that Edith and Manly had prepared together under the title Art Sketches (later Symbols). This chapter offers its fifth piece, “Palimpsest,” chosen because it is spoken by a woman of about Edith’s age. It then considers Edith’s final published novel, Olwen Growing (its English title)/Severn Woods (its American title) (1930). While very fully fictionalized, the novel transparently relates with Edith’s personal biography. Edith says she hadn’t read any of the reviews (they were good), but she did ask author and critic Frank Arthur Swinnerton (1884–1982) whether he thought she should persist with her writing. He replied that she absolutely should.