IAS Book Launch: Edith Wharton and German Culture

ABOUT THE BOOK
Given Wharton’s broad education in European languages and cultures, the absence of a full-length study of the influence of German thinking and aesthetics on her creative work has long been a considerable gap in the field of Wharton studies.

Maria-Novella Mercuri offers a close analysis of Wharton’s engagement with German literature and philosophy. Each chapter centers on one main novel or theme recurring in a group of works including poetry, plays and short fiction, as well as posthumously published autobiographical work. Wharton’s body of work is analysed in relation to German authors such as Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich de La Motte Fouqué, Theodor Fontane, Clara Viebig, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Sudermann, and Gottfried Keller. Mercuri also draws attention to the impact on Wharton of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche and to the pervasive influence of Goethe’s thought about history, ethics and aesthetics that is evident in her work.

Edith Wharton and German Culture was published by Bloomsbury in January 2026.

ABOUT THE EVENT
The author, Maria-Novella Mercuri, will present the book. Respondents will be confirmed soon. There will be time for questions.

About the Speaker

Dr Maria-Novella Mercuri is a Lecturer at UCL School of European Languages, Culture, and Society

Maria-Novella Mercuri read for an MA in Philosophy and a PhD in German Studies and Comparative Literature at UCL. She teaches undergraduate courses on European history, comparative literature, art fiction and crime fiction, and postgraduate courses on New Woman literature. 
Mercuri has translated into Italian two volumes of Wharton’s stories set in Italy and her novel The Fruit of the Tree, on which she has written a monograph, The Fruit of the Tree e la narrative di Edith Wharton. Her publications include reviews and articles for international journals and chapters on Wharton in The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton (2022) and Grazia Deledda’s Painterly Aesthetic (2025). 

More about Maria-Novella Mercuri