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Edith Wharton

Born:	January 24, 1862
Died:	August 11, 1937
Occupation:	Novelist, short story writer, designer

Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Literary Success 3 Later Life 4 Characteristics of her Writing 5 Works 6 Additional Publications 7 Further Reading 8 In Popular Culture 9 External Links

Born Edith Newbold Jones to a wealthy New York family often associated with the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses", Edith combined her insider's view into America's privileged classes with a brilliant natural wit to write novels and short stories notable for their humor and incisiveness. Wharton was well acquainted with many of the great literary and public figures of her era, including Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1885, at 23 years of age, she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years her senior. They were divorced in 1913. Edith Wharton was also highly regarded as a landscape architect, interior designer and a taste-maker of her time. She wrote several influential books including The Decoration of Houses, her first published work, and Italian Villas and Their Gardens.

In 1902 she built The Mount, her estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, which was designed by her and exemplifies her design principles. The house and gardens have undergone extensive restoration and are open to the public from May through October. Edith Wharton wrote several of her novels while living there, including her 1905 masterpiece The House of Mirth, which constitutes the first of many large-scale efforts to chronicle the true nature of old New York. She maintained residence at The Mount until 1911, while at the same time becoming increasingly attached to her life in France. First, she resided at 58 Rue de Varenne, Paris, in an apartment that belonged to George Washington Vanderbilt II. Then, in 1918, once the chaos of the Great War had subsided, she abandoned her fashionable apartment for the more tranquil Pavillon Colombe, whose rich history intrigued her immensely, in nearby Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt. And, finally, she acquired Sainte-Claire le Château, formerly a convent, in the southern village of Hyères, to which she retreated during the winters and springs.

With the help of her influential connections in the French government (primarily with Walter Berry, then president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris), she was among the few foreigners in France who had any access to their funds during the war and was also allowed to travel extensively by motorcar to the dangerous front lines of the war. Wharton described these trips in a series of articles later published as Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort.

Throughout the war, she labored tirelessly in charitable efforts for refugees, and for her indispensable aid she was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1916. The scope of her relief activities is astounding: Wharton operated work rooms for unemployed Frenchwomen, held concerts to provide work for musicians, supported tuberculosis hospitals, and founded the American Hostels for the relief of Belgian refugees. In 1916, Wharton edited a volume entitled The Book of the Homeless, featuring writings, art, and musical scores from almost every major European artist of the day. After the war, she returned to the United States only once more — to receive her honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1923.

The Age of Innocence (1920), perhaps her best known work, won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making her the first woman to win the award. She spoke flawless French and many of her books were published in both French and English.

Wharton was friend and confidante to many gifted intellectuals of her time: Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, and Andre Gide were all guests of hers at one time or another. Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark were valued friends as well, and she was the godmother of Clark's second son, Colin (1932 - 2002), who wrote the book The Prince, the Showgirl and Me about his work as third assistant director of the film The Prince and the Showgirl. Her meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald is described by the editors of her letters as "one of the better-known failed encounters in the American literary annals". She was also good friends with Theodore Roosevelt.

Wharton continued writing until her death on August 11, 1937, aged 75, in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France. She is buried in the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles, France.

Wharton's last novel, The Buccaneers, was unfinished at the time of her death. Marion Mainwaring finished the story after carefully studying the notes and synopsis Wharton had previously written. The novel was published in 1938 (unfinished version) and 1993 (Mainwaring's completion).

Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by a subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class pre-World War I society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics. In such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence she employed both humor and profound empathy to describe the lives of New York's upper-class.

• Verses 1878
• Only A Child 1879 (poem)
• The Decoration of Houses 1897
• The Greater Inclination 1899
• The Touchstone 1900
• The Line of Least Resistance 1900
• The Rembrandt 1900
• April Showers 1900
• Crucial Instances 1901
• The Moving Finger 1901
• The Recovery 1901
• Margaret of Cortona 1901 (poem)
• The Valley of Decision 1902
• The Quicksand 1902
• The Reckoning 1902
• The Mission of Jane 1902
• The Dilletante 1903
• The Vice of Reading 1903
• Italian Villas and Their Gardens 1904
• The Last Asset 1904
• The Letter 1904
• The Other Two 1904
• The Pot-Boiler 1904
• The Best Man 1905
• The House of Mirth 1905
• Italian Backgrounds 1905
• In Trust 1906
• The Introducers 1906
• The Fruit of the Tree 1907
• Madame de Treymes 1907
• A Motor-Flight Through France 1908
• The Bolted Door 1908
• Expiation 1908
• Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse 1909
• A Grave 1909 (poem)
• Ogrin The Hermit 1909
• The Comrade 1910
• The Letters 1910
• Other Times, Other Manners 1911
• Ethan Frome 1912
• The Reef 1912
• The Long run 1912
• The Custom of the Country 1913
• Coming Home 1915
• Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort 1915
• The Great Blue Tent 1915 (Poem)
• The Book of the Homeless 1916
• Xingu and Other Stories 1916
• The Bunner Sisters 1916
• Summer 1917
• The Marne 1918
• The Refugees 1919
• French Ways and Their Meaning 1919
• The Seed of the Faith 1919
• Writing a War Story 1919
• The Age of Innocence 1920
• In Morocco 1920
• In Provence and Lyrical Epigrams 1920 (poem)
• The Glimpses of the Moon 1922
• A Son at the Front 1923
• Old New York 1924
• The Mother's Recompense 1925
• The Writing of Fiction 1925
• Here and Beyond 1926
• Twelve Poems 1926
• Twilight Sleep 1927
• The Children 1928
• Hudson River Bracketed 1929
• The Gods Arrive 1932
• A Backward Glance 1934
• The Buccaneers 1938

• Novels (R.W.B. Lewis, ed.) (The Library of America, 1986) ISBN 978-0-94045031-8. Includes The House of Mirth, The Reef, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence.
• The Letters of Edith Wharton (R.W.B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis, eds.) ISBN 0-02-034400-7, particularly the editorial introductions to the chronological sections, especially for 1902–07, 1911–14, 1919–27, and 1928–37, and the editorial footnotes to the letter to F.S. Fitzgerald (June 8, 1925)
• Novellas and Other Writings (Cynthia Griffin Wolff, ed.) (The Library of America, 1990) ISBN 978-0-94045053-0, which contains her autobiography, A Backward Glance.
• Collected Stories 1891-1910 (Maureen Howard, ed.) (The Library of America, 2001) ISBN 978-1-88301193-2
• Collected Stories 1911-1937 (Maureen Howard, ed.) (The Library of America, 2001) ISBN 978-1-88301194-9
• Selected Poems (Louis Auchincloss, ed.) (The Library of America, 2005) ISBN 978-1-93108286-0
• Twilight Sleep (R.F.Godfrey, ed.) ISBN 0-684-83964-4

• Hermione Lee (2007) Edith Wharton, Chatto & Windus, ISBN-10 0701166657 (UK)/Knopf (USA forthcoming)

• R.W.B. Lewis (1975) Edith Wharton: A Biography, Harper & Row.

• Cynthia Griffin Wolff (1977) A Feast of Words

• Shari Benstock (1994) No Gifts From Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (played by actress Clare Higgins) travels across North Africa with Indiana Jones in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (Chapter 16, which is entitled Tales of Innocence).

• The Mount - Estate and gardens designed by Edith Wharton
• The Edith Wharton Papers at the Lilly Library, Indiana University
• "Edith Wharton's passionate realism". A review of Hermione Lee's Edith Wharton in the TLS, February 9th, 2007.
• Edith Wharton Society includes links to all Wharton's works legally available on the web, links to resources, searchable texts, bibliographies, queries and replies, and other materials.

• Works by Edith Wharton at Project Gutenberg
• Pushkin Press - Edith Wharton - Glimpses of the Moon
• Edith Wharton at the Internet Broadway Database
• Edith Wharton at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata
NAME	Wharton, Edith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Jones, Edith Newbold
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American novelist, short story writer, designer
DATE OF BIRTH	January 24, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH	August 11, 1937
PLACE OF DEATH