Edith Wharton
(1862–1937)

Born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City in 1862, Edith Wharton was the youngest of three children born to Frederic and Lucretia Jones. Wharton's parents were descendants of English and Dutch colonists who made their fortunes in shipping, banking, and real estate. Young Edith Jones belonged to the most fashionable society in New York. As a child, she did not go to school or college, instead, she educated herself by reading the books in her father's library. Her education also came from many trips abroad with her family. During this time she acquired fluency in French, German, and Italian.

At 23, Edith Jones married Edward Wharton, a wealthy banker from Boston and a man more than ten years her senior. Not content to be just a society matron and hostess, Wharton chose to write. Her first work was a book of nonfiction entitled The Decoration of Houses. It was written in collaboration with the architect Ogden Codman, Jr., in 1897. This was followed two years later by a collection of short stories entitled The Greater Inclination (1899). The publication of this book set Wharton apart from the society from which she came, for the members of this elite group regarded writing as a career to be below them. However, with the publication of her second novel, The House of Mirth (1905), Wharton became a well-known and highly successful author. It was also at this time that Wharton discovered the theme that would touch most of her future works: the cruelties of the aristocratic American society. The House of Mirth was followed by Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.

Throughout the course of her life, Wharton published more than 50 novels, short stories, travel essays and criticisms. She died at the age of 76 at her home in Paris.

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