Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist and short story writer.
Biography
Born Edith Newbold Jones, to a wealthy New York family, Edith combined her insights into the privileged classes with her natural wit to write novels and short fiction which are notable for their humor and incisiveness.
In 1885, aged 23, she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, who was twelve years her senior. They were divorced in 1913. For several years at the end of her tumultous, unhappy marriage, she had an affair with William Morton Fullerton (1865-1952), an American-born bisexual man-about-town who worked as a journalist for the Times and juggled romances with Lord Ronald Gower , the Ranee of Sarawak , and Camille Chabbert , aka Ixo, an opera singer who was reported to be a mistress of the King of Portugal.
Between 1900 and 1938, Wharton wrote many novels, starting in 1905 with the publication of The House of Mirth, a story that attacked the aristocratic society of which she was a most prominent member. An admirer of European culture and architecture, Edith Wharton crossed the Atlantic 66 times during her life.
She was living on the very fashionable rue de Varenne in Paris, France when World War I began, and, using her many high level connections within the French government, she was allowed to travel extensively by motorcar to the front lines. In Paris, she worked for the Red Cross and with refugees, for which she was awarded the French Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor). Following the War, she returned to the United States only one more time in her life.
Although most were poor and not part of her refined world, she was fascinated and encouraged by the gathering of the artistic community in Montmartre and Montparnasse at the turn of the century.
Her best known work, The Age of Innocence, won her a Pulitzer Prize and was written in 1920. She spoke flawless French and many of her books were published in both French and English.
Wharton was friend and confidant of many gifted intellectuals of her time: Theodore Roosevelt, F Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway were all guests of hers at one time or another. She was also good friends with Henry James and Jean Cocteau.
Edith Wharton was also highly regarded as a landscape architect and a taste-maker of her time. She wrote several influential books including "The Decoration of Houses" and "Italian Villas." The Mount, her estate in Lennox, Massachusetts, was designed by her and exemplifies her design principles.
Wharton continued writing until her death on August 11, 1937, in St.-Brice-sous-Forêt , Val-d'Oise, Île-de-France, 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
Bibliography
- Verses - 1878
- The Decoration of Houses - 1897
- The Greater Inclination - 1899
- The Touchstone - 1900
- Crucial Instances - 1901
- The Valley of Decision - 1902
- Italian Villas and Their Gardens - 1904
- The House of Mirth - 1905
- Italian Backgrounds - 1905
- The Fruit of the Tree - 1907
- Madame de Treymes - 1907
- A Motor-Flight Through France - 1908
- Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse - 1909
- Ethan Frome - 1911
- The Reef - 1912
- The Custom of the Country - 1913
- Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort - 1915
- The Book of the Homeless - 1916
- Xingu and Other Stories - 1916
- Summer - 1917
- The Marne - 1918
- French Ways and Their Meaning - 1919
- The Age of Innocence - 1920
- In Morocco - 1920
- 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
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