Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
Author of The Age of Innocence
About the Author
Edith Wharton was a woman of extreme contrasts; brought up to be a leisured aristocrat, she was also dedicated to her career as a writer. She wrote novels of manners about the old New York society from which she came, but her attitude was consistently critical. Her irony and her satiric touches, as show more well as her insight into human character, continue to appeal to readers today. As a child, Wharton found refuge from the demands of her mother's social world in her father's library and in making up stories. Her marriage at age 23 to Edward ("Teddy") Wharton seemed to confirm her place in the conventional role of wealthy society woman, but she became increasingly dissatisfied with the "mundanities" of her marriage and turned to writing, which drew her into an intellectual community and strengthened her sense of self. After publishing two collections of short stories, The Greater Inclination (1899) and Crucial Instances (1901), she wrote her first novel, The Valley of Decision (1902), a long, historical romance set in eighteenth-century Italy. Her next work, the immensely popular The House of Mirth (1905), was a scathing criticism of her own "frivolous" New York society and its capacity to destroy her heroine, the beautiful Lily Bart. As Wharton became more established as a successful writer, Teddy's mental health declined and their marriage deteriorated. In 1907 she left America altogether and settled in Paris, where she wrote some of her most memorable stories of harsh New England rural life---Ethan Frome (1911) and Summer (1917)---as well as The Reef (1912), which is set in France. All describe characters forced to make moral choices in which the rights of individuals are pitted against their responsibilities to others. She also completed her most biting satire, The Custom of the Country (1913), the story of Undine Spragg's climb, marriage by marriage, from a midwestern town to New York to a French chateau. During World War I, Wharton dedicated herself to the war effort and was honored by the French government for her work with Belgian refugees. After the war, the world Wharton had known was gone. Even her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence (1920), a story set in old New York, could not recapture the former time. Although the new age welcomed her---Wharton was both a critical and popular success, honored by Yale University and elected to The National Institute of Arts and Letters---her later novels show her struggling to come to terms with a new era. In The Writing of Fiction (1925), Wharton acknowledged her debt to her friend Henry James, whose writings share with hers the descriptions of fine distinctions within a social class and the individual's burdens of making proper moral decisions. R.W.B. Lewis's biography of Wharton, published in 1975, along with a wealth of new biographical material, inspired an extensive reevaluation of Wharton. Feminist readings and reactions to them have focused renewed attention on her as a woman and as an artist. Although many of her books have recently been reprinted, there is still no complete collected edition of her work. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Edith Wharton
Novels: The House of Mirth / The Reef / The Custom of the Country / The Age of Innocence (1986) 521 copies
Novellas and Other Writings : Madame De Treymes / Ethan Frome / Summer / Old New York / The Mother's Recompense / A… (1990) 371 copies
Four Novels of the 1920s: The Glimpses of the Moon / A Son at the Front / Twilight Sleep / The Children (2015) 89 copies
Gramercy Modern Classics: Edith Wharton: Age of Innocence & Two Other Complete Works of Love, Morals, and Manners (1996) 39 copies
Anime attardate - La tragedia della Musa 13 copies
The Classic Ghost Stories Collection: Chilling Tales from Guy de Maupassant, M. R. James, Edith Wharton, E. F. Benson,… (2020) — Author — 9 copies
Works of Edith Wharton. The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, Sanctuary, The Custom of the Country,… (2009) 7 copies
Tre storie del soprannaturale 6 copies
Ghosts: Edith Wharton's Gothic Tales 5 copies
Quartet: Four Stories 4 copies
La splendeur des âmes : Chez les heureux du monde ; Les Beaux Mariages ; Eté ; Le temps de… (2012) 3 copies
Triangoli imperfetti 3 copies
All Souls [short story] 3 copies
The Age of Innocence; Summer 3 copies
Opowieści małżeńskie 2 copies
SUFLETUL OMULUI 2 copies
Der Unfall 2 copies
The Early Short Fiction: Kerfol, Mrs. Manstey's View, the Bolted Door, the Dilettante, the House of the Dead Hand (2006) 2 copies
The age of innocence 2 copies
Miss Mary Pask [Short Story] 2 copies
The Collected Works of Edith Wharton: The Complete Works PergamonMedia (Highlights of World Literature) (2013) 2 copies
NEW YORK-UL DE ALTADATA 1 copy
L'incidente 1 copy
Edith Wharton: Vol 1. Collected Stories:1891-1910 (Library of America) by Edith Wharton (2014-10-16) 1 copy
Pienezza di vita 1 copy
Wharton Short Stories 1 copy
Confessions Of A Novelist 1 copy
Świat zabawy 1 copy
Wharton Novels 1 copy
“The Portrait” 1 copy
Relato em Marrocos 1 copy
OBSTACOLE 1 copy
A book of quotations 1 copy
36 Ghost Stories: Anthology 1 copy
Ethan frome and stories 1 copy
the mother 1 copy
WHARTON: NOVELS 1 copy
14 Great Novels 1 copy
Il ritorno a casa 1 copy
El diagnóstico 1 copy
Wharton, Edith Archive 1 copy
Cuentos 1 copy
The Works of Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence, The Touchstone, The Valley of Decision, Sanctuary, The House of Mirth… (2012) 1 copy
Wharton Edith 1 copy
DIEU D'AMOUR 1 copy
Viaggio in Francia 1 copy
A Bottle of Perrier 1 copy
Sussurros de Verão 1 copy
Gli infelicissimi 1 copy
Associated Works
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume One: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker (2000) — Contributor — 439 copies
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps (2009) — Contributor — 265 copies
The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce (2010) — Contributor — 149 copies
The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest (2013) — Contributor — 148 copies
An American Album: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Harper's Magazine (2000) — Contributor — 133 copies
Four Stories by American Women: Rebecca Harding Davis, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sarah OrneJewett, Edith Wharton… (1990) — Contributor — 125 copies
Writing Women's Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Narratives by Twentieth-Century American Women Writers (1994) — Contributor — 121 copies
Writing New York: A Literary Anthology (Expanded 10th-Anniversary Edition) (2008) — Contributor — 93 copies
The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present (2020) — Contributor — 83 copies
The Raven and the Monkey's Paw: Classics of Horror and Suspense from the Modern Library (1998) — Author, some editions — 64 copies
Lovers & Other Monsters: A Collection of Amorous Tales of Fantasy, Old and New (1992) — Contributor — 57 copies
The Web She Weaves: An Anthology of Mystery and Suspense Stories by Women (1983) — Contributor — 52 copies
There is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man: More Strange Fiction and Hallucinatory Tales (2020) — Contributor — 43 copies
The Lifted Veil: The Book of Fantastic Literature by Women 1800-World War II (1806) — Contributor — 42 copies
Isaac Asimov Presents Tales of the Occult: Stories by H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton,… (1989) — Contributor — 41 copies
The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023 (2023) — Contributor — 33 copies
Weird Women: Volume 2: 1840-1925: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers (2) (2021) — Contributor — 28 copies
Mistresses of Mystery: Two Centuries of Suspense Stories by the Gentle Sex (1973) — Contributor — 27 copies
Classic American women writers: Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather (Perennial library ; P 502) (1980) — Contributor — 25 copies
Three Classics by American Women: The Awakening; Ethan Frome; O Pioneers! (1990) — some editions — 25 copies
The Tavern Lamps Are Burning: Literary Journeys through Six Regions and Four Centuries of New York State (1964) — Contributor — 20 copies
Femmes de Siècle: Stories from the 90s - Women Writing at the End of Two Centuries (1992) — Contributor — 17 copies
Haunted Women: The Best Supernatural Tales by American Women Writers (1985) — Contributor — 15 copies
Masters of the Macabre: An Anthology of Mystery, Horror, and Detection (1975) — Contributor — 13 copies
Great American Ghost Stories: Chilling Tales by Poe, Bierce, Hawthorne and Others (2008) — Contributor — 10 copies
Representative American Short Stories — Contributor — 5 copies
Pulitzer Prize Winning Works Collection: One of Ours, His Family, Miss Lulu Bett, Cornhuskers, Anna Christie, Alice… (2013) 4 copies
The Best from Cosmopolitan — Contributor — 4 copies
Wives and Lovers — Contributor — 3 copies
A Reader for Writers — Contributor — 2 copies
Contos Dramáticos — Contributor — 1 copy
Prize stories from Collier's, 5 volumes — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Wharton, Edith
- Legal name
- Jones, Edith Newbold (birth)
- Birthdate
- 1862-01-24
- Date of death
- 1937-08-11
- Burial location
- Cimetière des Gonards, Versailles, France
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Place of death
- Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, Val-d'Oise, France
- Cause of death
- stroke
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
Lenox, Massachusetts, USA
Paris, France
Hyères, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, Val-d'Oise, France - Education
- at home
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
travel writer
landscape architect
designer - Relationships
- Clark, Colin (godson)
Farrand, Beatrix (niece)
Fullerton, William Morton (lover)
Wharton, Edward Robbins (ex-husband) - Awards and honors
- Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (1916)
nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature (1927, 1928, 1930)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature | 1926)
Pulitzer Prize in Literature (1921)
National Women's Hall of Fame (1996) - Short biography
- Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones to a wealthy New York family. She spent her early childhood in Europe, where she developed a gift for languages and a deep appreciation for art, architecture and literature.
She was educated by governesses and by her own reading, and began writing at any early age. Verses, her first volume of poems, was published privately when she was 16. In 1885, she married Edward "Teddy" Wharton, 12 years her senior. In 1897, with Ogden Codman, Jr., an architect friend, she published her first major book, The Decoration of Houses (1897). A few years later, she bought 113-acres in Lenox, Massachusetts, then designed and built The Mount, a country home to meet her needs as a designer, gardener, hostess, and writer. During the next 10 years at The Mount, she wrote some of her greatest works, including The House of Mirth (1905) and Ethan Frome (1911). After a divorce from Teddy Wharton in 1913, she moved permanently to France. During World War I, she did social reform and humanitarian work, including establishing schools for refugee children, for which she received the Legion of Honor.
Members
Discussions
Folio Archives 267: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton 1990 in Folio Society Devotees (April 2022)
Found: Wharton-esque Americans in Italy in Name that Book (April 2022)
December 2021: Edith Wharton in Monthly Author Reads (January 2022)
Group Read, June 2021: The Glimpses of the Moon in 1001 Books to read before you die (July 2021)
August: Reading Edith Wharton in Monthly Author Reads (June 2018)
March Read: Edith Wharton in Virago Modern Classics (May 2017)
1913: Wharton - The Custom of the Country in Literary Centennials (February 2014)
The Age of Innocence: Chapters 25-34 in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (November 2011)
***Group Read: The Age of Innocence in The Highly-Rated Book Group (October 2011)
The Age of Innocence: Chapters 14-24 in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (October 2011)
The Age of Innocence: Chapters 1-13 in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (October 2011)
The AGE OF INNOCENCE Group Read: Main Thread in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (October 2011)
Reviews
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
I feel like this is a book I couldn't have enjoyed as much in my teens or twenties (unlike Tess of the D'urbervilles, which I read in my teens and loved for its lurid romanticism). The story of Lily Bart resonates better in my 30s, and I appreciated the tarnished view of society life much more after years of reading Regency and Victorian romances where everything works out in the end. Lily was a character I could really feel for; if I'd been in her position, I'd like to think that I would have made different (better) choices, but I suspect that I wouldn't--and that's where the appeal lies. We like to think we can see our choices in black and white, but emotion adds so many shades of grey that we can find ourselves making worse and worse choices with the best of intentions.… (more)
“He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of it's frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.”
Don't fall for the old myth that classics are boring. This novella of forbidden love, originally published in 1911, is filled with emotion. I didn't want to stop listening to the audio.
Wharton tells the tale of Ethan Frome, his hypochondriac wife Zeena, and Zeena's cousin Mattie Silver. The landscape of Starkfield, MA (particularly the cold, barren winters) is as much of a character as any of the people in the story.
Young Ethan is interested in science and engineering. He wants to escape the nothingness of Starkfield and move to a larger town where people are interested in ideas and education. He loves nature, but has no interest in agriculture. Unfortunately life's circumstances keep him tethered to Starkfield and the family farm. He marries Zeena, though they aren't well-suited. When Zeena's cousin Mattie comes to live with them, he sees an alternative to his bleak life. With Mattie in the house Ethan has a new lease on life -- though his interactions with her are completely chaste. This happiness is short-lived; however. Why? You'll have to read the book ;-)
I have to thank my GR friend Julie for encouraging me to read this. I was not disappointed!
4.5 Stars… (more)
Don't fall for the old myth that classics are boring. This novella of forbidden love, originally published in 1911, is filled with emotion. I didn't want to stop listening to the audio.
Wharton tells the tale of Ethan Frome, his hypochondriac wife Zeena, and Zeena's cousin Mattie Silver. The landscape of Starkfield, MA (particularly the cold, barren winters) is as much of a character as any of the people in the story.
Young Ethan is interested in science and engineering. He wants to escape the nothingness of Starkfield and move to a larger town where people are interested in ideas and education. He loves nature, but has no interest in agriculture. Unfortunately life's circumstances keep him tethered to Starkfield and the family farm. He marries Zeena, though they aren't well-suited. When Zeena's cousin Mattie comes to live with them, he sees an alternative to his bleak life. With Mattie in the house Ethan has a new lease on life -- though his interactions with her are completely chaste. This happiness is short-lived; however. Why? You'll have to read the book ;-)
I have to thank my GR friend Julie for encouraging me to read this. I was not disappointed!
4.5 Stars… (more)
If you're looking for accessible classics, Edith Wharton's novellas are a good place to start. Although I preferred [b:Ethan Frome|5246|Ethan Frome|Edith Wharton|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389822254s/5246.jpg|132919] over this book, both of these novellas resonated more strongly with me than Wharton's more popular novels ([b:The House of Mirth|17728|The House of Mirth|Edith Wharton|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328729186s/17728.jpg|1652564] and [b:The Age of Innocence|53835|The Age of Innocence|Edith Wharton|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388248423s/53835.jpg|1959512]).
As in "Frome", "Summer" is set in a small New England town and centers around the complex relationships of just a few main characters. For me, this is where Wharton is at the top of her game. Love is never easy or straightforward on Wharton's pages, and it rarely enters the equation when marriage is concerned.
"Summer" is a sad coming-of-age tale where young Charity Royall learns many of life's cruel lessons -- about class, about men, and about loneliness -- all too soon.
… (more)
As in "Frome", "Summer" is set in a small New England town and centers around the complex relationships of just a few main characters. For me, this is where Wharton is at the top of her game. Love is never easy or straightforward on Wharton's pages, and it rarely enters the equation when marriage is concerned.
"Summer" is a sad coming-of-age tale where young Charity Royall learns many of life's cruel lessons -- about class, about men, and about loneliness -- all too soon.
… (more)
Mrs. Wharton is an excellent writer. She writes a well-crafted plot and takes care that our interest will be held throughout. She knows character and how to flesh it out in fiction. This must come from being a careful and discriminating observer of human behaviour. All her characters in this book are convincing as participants in a developing drama; a crisis that calls for a writer whose familiarity with human foibles will carry the novel through to a satisfying, yet sobering, end.
This novel flows without any authorial interventions which might disturb it. Mrs. Wharton is so sufficiently in command of the contemporary social milieu of the ruling classes of early Twentieth Century America as to lead the reader into a very credible fiction.
The great themes of the book are the condition of mill workers and the degree to which factory owners might alleviate at least sone of their drudgery, the great debate about when life in extremis should be ended for mercy's sake, and the frightful consequences that might ensue when communication between loving partners fails to be open; all as relevant today as in 1902.
Edith Wharton is from the highest echelon of American writers in my opinion.… (more)
This novel flows without any authorial interventions which might disturb it. Mrs. Wharton is so sufficiently in command of the contemporary social milieu of the ruling classes of early Twentieth Century America as to lead the reader into a very credible fiction.
The great themes of the book are the condition of mill workers and the degree to which factory owners might alleviate at least sone of their drudgery, the great debate about when life in extremis should be ended for mercy's sake, and the frightful consequences that might ensue when communication between loving partners fails to be open; all as relevant today as in 1902.
Edith Wharton is from the highest echelon of American writers in my opinion.… (more)
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Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 320
- Also by
- 185
- Members
- 56,520
- Popularity
- #259
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 1,296
- ISBNs
- 3,498
- Languages
- 31
- Favorited
- 364
