Unseen Edith Wharton short story is published more than a century later

Edith Wharton, the American novelist, during her early European trip, ca 1885. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive View image in fullscreen Edith Wharton, the American novelist, during her early European trip, ca 1885. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive Unseen Edith Wharton short story is published more than a century later The Men Who Saved the World, the Pulitzer winner’s lost manuscript found in Yale archives, appears in Strand magazine A never-before-published short story by Edith Wharton , the first female Pulitzer prize winner, who encapsulated the so-called gilded age of US society in bestselling novels including The Age of Innocence, received a first public airing on Friday. The Men Who Saved the World, discovered in the author’s archives at Yale University, appears in the Strand , a quarterly magazine that has previously turned up lost or previously unknown works by literary luminaries such as Raymond Chandler , Graham Greene and Tennessee Williams . The story, believed to have been written no earlier than July 1918, is a significant find for scholars and fans of Wharton’s works. It was spread across two corrected but undated typescripts, found “ incomplete and unpublished ” in the Edith Wharton Collection at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. James Ellroy: ‘It’s satanic to me, the dependency people have on computers’ Read more Set during a dinner party in a French chateau towards the end of the first world war, it tells of the country’s wealthiest residents attempting to move on from the conflict that recently scarred them, even as guns are heard still booming and soldiers dying only miles away. The tale is punctuated by the meal being served on a grand dining room table that was used as an operating table for amputations only months before when the chateau was used as a field hospital. A main character is a young American nurse called Milly Arden, who observes the household’s easy return to its privileged prewar days as she wrestles with the horrors of war and the injuries she has seen and treated. Arden’s character appears to be at least in part autobiographical: Wharton, who died in 1937 aged 75, had extensive experience of field hospitals during the conflict also known as the Great War, and helped set up medical care and facilities for affected women and children. Many of her observations appeared in Fighting France , a series of articles published by Penn State University’s digital archive. Andrew Gulli, editor-in-chief of the Strand, said the story from more than a century ago has parallels in global events of today. “We live in a time where we’re very far away from a lot of horrific events that are happening around the world, and this story sort of encapsulates that mood where there’s this beautiful chateau, and people are trying to go back to the old prewar era with the chandeliers and this wonderful dancing, and a dinner party, and not far away the war’s still happening,” he said. “Wharton is just wonderful