Flower of Manhattan.

BACKWARD Glance, A (Book); WHARTON, Edith, 1862-1937; SOCIAL groups; HOUSE of Mirth, The (Book : Wharton); BOOKS; LITERATURE

This article focuses on the book "A Backward Glance," by Edith Wharton. Nothing could be more foolish than to throw down this book with the objection that its backgrounds, its people and its events seem lacking in vital significance to the harried and very much preoccupied reader of today. It is beside the point to make uncomplimentary comparisons between the author of "The House of Mirth" and the man with the dinner pail — that latter-nineteenth-century specter whom Wharton quaintly invokes in one passage. The point is rather that Wharton was the flower, the exquisite and certainly altogether undeserved flower, of a social group in the U.S. whose always tenuous existence has for some time now shaded off into oblivion.