"Roman Fever" was first published in 1934 in Liberty magazine; two years later, Wharton included it in her final short story collection, The World Over. At the time, a few years before her death, Wharton was a literary star, both in the United States and abroad. As such, the story collection received reviews from newspapers and magazines ranging from the The New York Times to the Saturday Review of Literature. The majority of reviewers found the collection to be, on the whole, a pleasing and successful representation of Wharton's work. Fanny Butcher pointed out in the Chicago Daily Tribune that although many contemporary readers tended to think of Wharton primarily as a novelist, The World Over served as a "fresh reminder of her incomparable skill in the short story." Percy Hutchinson, writing for the New York Times, found that the collection proved that Wharton's reputation as a...