Out of the Shadows

An early play by Edith Wharton has been rediscovered by two scholars – Mary Chinery, Professor of English at Georgian Court University, Lakewood, New Jersey, and Laura Rattray, Reader in North American Literature at the University of Glasgow, Scotland – thanks to a passing reference to its title at the 2016 Wharton in Washington Conference. A chance encounter that brought to light one of Edith Wharton's earliest works and the first - and only - original, full-length play of hers ever to be discovered.

Both Mary and Laura have had a particular focus on Edith Wharton as a playwright. Laura was well-known for writing about the variety of genres in Wharton’s writing, especially her early drama before The House of Mirth. Mary had separately been working on the origin of Edith Wharton’s 1899 dialogue, “The Twilight of the God,” In Mary’s presentation about that dialogue, she referenced The Shadow of a Doubt, from an article that Mary found from The New York Times, published in 1901, which reported that the production was being postponed.

Laura, in the audience, had never heard of the play and questioned Mary about it. Ultimately, the 1901 production of the play was cancelled, after which it seemed to vanish, and was not mentioned in other writings by or about Wharton. That conversation sparked a search by the team, and it is thanks to the connection made at the conference, and some great detective work, that Mary and Laura found two copies of the manuscript in the Playscripts and Promptbooks Collection (Performing Arts) at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. A working rehearsal manuscript also resides at the Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library.

As Mary says: “No one had ever looked for the play because they did not realize it was there.” The Shaw Festival is delighted, after 120 years, to bring this play fully into the light, with the first fully-staged version of The Shadow of a Doubt by Edith Wharton on our Royal George stage, directed by Peter Hinton-Davis.