We are excited to announce the first major, in-person international gathering of Edith Wharton researchers in a decade. Please join us from Thursday 4 June to Saturday 6 June 2026 for a “summit” at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts, now a vibrant cultural centre, as we come together to investigate, celebrate and critique the life, work and legacy of one of America’s most remarkable and enduring authors. CFP deadline 1 Oct 2025

We welcome all scholars, students, enthusiasts and readers of Edith Wharton. What does Edith Wharton mean to you? We encourage contributions in all forms, from 20-minute papers to flash talks and poster presentations as well as proposals for alternative sessions from book club gatherings to interactive workshops and creative, musical, and other artistic responses to Wharton’s capacious oeuvre.

We seek contributions on all aspects of Wharton’s life and work and their ongoing relevance. Presentations may address writings in any genre, spanning novels, short stories, critical writing, design, poetry, plays, travel writing, memoir, and others. We also welcome contributions that speak to Wharton’s world outside her life as a writer, from her philanthropy, her war relief work, and her enduring place in transatlantic culture. We welcome archival investigations, comparative, intersectional and theoretical approaches, considerations of Wharton’s contemporaries, sense of place, and legacies, alongside investigations of Wharton as both a flawed woman of her time and a radical and transgressive figure. Also encouraged are approaches that consider Wharton’s far-ranging appeal across 21st-century popular culture (e.g., the CW network’s Gossip Girl, HBO’s The Gilded Age, Francis Ford Coppola’s and Sofia Coppola’s attempts to adapt Wharton’s novels to the screen).

Whatever the topic, we particularly encourage presenters to address the question of Edith Wharton’s relevance today in an ever-changing world, how she speaks to our contemporary society at a time perhaps not dissimilar to one Wharton described in January 1932 as leaving us all “nervously sitting, on the thin crust of the same volcano.”

This three-day event will offer an invigorating cocktail of behind-the-scenes house tours, up close viewings of Wharton’s library, tours of Lenox and the surrounding area, special guest speakers, social mixers and readings in the house, terrace and grounds. There will be sessions sponsored by both the Edith Wharton Society and the Edith Wharton Review. Alongside the presentations, The Mount will host a celebration both of Wharton scholarship published in the ten years since the last Wharton gathering in Washington, D.C. and hot off the press new research.

Please submit a 300-word abstract of your proposed contribution, brief biographical note and an indication of any audio visual requirements, by 1 October 2025 via this link: https://edithwharton.org/calendar/summit/