Edith Wharton

Edith Newbold Wharton (born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862, in Manhattan; died August 11, 1937) was an American author and designer. Because she belonged to New York’s elite, she used that insider perspective to write realistic stories about the lives and moral codes of the Gilded Age. Her novel *The Age of Innocence* won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921, making her the first woman to receive that honor. She was added to the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1996. Among her most famous works are *The House of Mirth*, the short novel *Ethan Frome*, and a number of well-regarded ghost stories.

**Biography**

**Early life**

Edith Newbold Jones was the daughter of George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, born in their brownstone at 14 West 23rd Street in New York City. Friends and family called her “Pussy Jones.” She had two older brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward. Frederic married Mary Cadwalader Rawle, and their daughter, Beatrix Farrand, became a landscape architect. Edith was baptized on Easter Sunday, April 20, 1862, at Grace Church.

Her father’s family, the Joneses, were wealthy and socially prominent, having made their fortune in real estate. The phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” is thought to refer to them. She was also related to the Rensselaers, one of the most prestigious old patroon families, who had received land grants from the former Dutch government of New York and New Jersey. Her father’s first cousin was Caroline Schermerhorn Astor. Fort Stevens in New York was named for her maternal great-grandfather, Ebenezer Stevens, a general and hero of the Revolutionary War.

Wharton was born during the Civil War, but her own accounts of family life never mention the conflict, except to note that their travels to Europe after the war were prompted by the decline in value of American currency. From 1866 to 1872, the Jones family visited France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. During these trips, young Edith became fluent in French, German, and Italian. At age nine, while the family was at a spa in the Black Forest, she nearly died from typhoid fever. After returning to the United States in 1872, they spent winters in New York City and summers in Newport, Rhode Island. While in Europe, she was taught by tutors and governesses. She rejected the fashion and etiquette standards expected of girls at the time—standards meant to help women marry well and be displayed at balls and parties. She saw these as superficial and oppressive. Wanting more education than she received, she read from her father’s library and the libraries of his friends. Her mother forbade her to read novels until she was married, and Edith obeyed that rule.

**Early writing**

Wharton told and wrote stories from a very young age. When her family moved to Europe and she was only four or five, she began what she called “making up.” She would invent stories for her family and walk around holding an open book, turning pages as if reading while actually improvising a tale. As a girl, she wrote poetry and fiction, and at 11 she tried to write her first novel. Her mother’s criticism stopped that ambition, so she turned to poetry. Her first published work appeared when she was 15: a translation of a German poem, “Was die Steine Erzählen” (“What the Stones Tell”) by Heinrich Karl Brugsch, for which she was paid $50. Her family did not want her name in print, because writing was not considered proper for a society woman of her era. So the poem was published under the name of a friend’s father, E. A. Washburn, a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson who supported women’s education. In 1877, at 15, she secretly wrote a novella, *Fast and Loose*. In 1878, her father arranged for a private printing of a collection of two dozen original poems and five translations, titled *Verses*. She published a poem under a pseudonym in the *New York World* in 1879. The next year, five of her poems appeared anonymously in the *Atlantic Monthly*, a major literary magazine. Despite these early successes, her family and social circle did not encourage her, and although she kept writing, she published nothing more until her poem “The Last Giustiniani” appeared in *Scribner’s Magazine* in October 1889.

**The “debutante” years**

Between 1880 and 1890, Wharton set aside her writing to take part in the social rituals of New York’s upper class. She paid close attention to the social changes around her, which she later used in her work. She officially came out as a debutante in 1879. At a December dance given by society matron Anna Morton, she was allowed to bare her shoulders and wear her hair up for the first time. She began a courtship with Henry Leyden Stevens, son of Paran Stevens, a wealthy hotelier and real estate investor from rural New Hampshire. (His sister, Minnie, married Arthur Paget.) The Jones family did not approve of Stevens.

In the middle of her debutante season, the Jones family returned to Europe in 1881 because of her father’s health. George Frederic Jones died of a stroke in Cannes in 1882. Stevens was with the family in Europe at the time. After returning to the United States with her mother, Wharton continued seeing Stevens, and they announced their engagement in August 1882. The engagement ended the month they were supposed to marry.

Her mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones, moved to Paris in 1883 and lived there until her death in 1901.

**1880s–1900s**

On April 29, 1885, at age 23, Edith married Edward Robbins (Teddy) Wharton, who was 12 years older, at the Trinity Chapel Complex in Manhattan. He came from a well-established Boston family, was a sportsman and gentleman of the same social class, and shared her love of travel.