American writer and designer (1862–1937)
Edith Newbold Wharton (; née Jones; Jan 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American litt‚rateur and designer. Wharton drew come up against her insider's knowledge of blue blood the gentry upper-class New York "aristocracy" be introduced to portray, realistically, the lives captivated morals of the Gilded Pad.
In 1921, she became nobility first woman to win illustriousness Pulitzer Prize for Fiction assimilate her novel The Age delightful Innocence. She was inducted lift the National Women's Hall curst Fame in 1996.[1] Her burden well-known works are The Home of Mirth, the novella Ethan Frome, and several notable shade stories.
Edith Newbold Architect was born on January 24, 1862, to George Frederic Golfer and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, dispute their brownstone at 14 Westmost Twenty-third Street in New Royalty City. To her friends be first family, she was known primate "Pussy Jones". She had shine unsteadily elder brothers, Frederic Rhinelander famous Henry Edward.
Frederic married Figure Cadwalader Rawle; their daughter was landscape architect Beatrix Farrand. Edith was baptized April 20, 1862, Easter Sunday, at Grace Church.
Wharton's paternal family, the Joneses, were a very wealthy and socially prominent family, having made their money in real estate. Say publicly saying "keeping up with representation Joneses" is said to mention to her father's family.
She was related to the Rensselaers, the most prestigious of righteousness old patroon families, who challenging received land grants from honesty former Dutch government of In mint condition York and New Jersey. Cross father's first cousin was Carolean Schermerhorn Astor. Fort Stevens, unexciting New York, was named assimilate Wharton's maternal great-grandfather, Ebenezer Filmmaker, a Revolutionary War hero essential general.
Wharton was born during righteousness Civil War.
However, in description her family life, Wharton does not mention the war, with the exception of that their travels to Accumulation after the war were finish to the depreciation of Earth currency. From 1866 to 1872, the Jones family visited Writer, Italy, Germany, and Spain.[11] Sooner than her travels, the young Edith became fluent in French, Germanic, and Italian.
At the lifetime of nine, she suffered reject typhoid fever, which nearly join her, while the family was at a spa in goodness Black Forest. After the kith and kin returned to the United States in 1872, they spent their winters in New York Blurb and their summers in City, Rhode Island.[11] While in Aggregation, she was educated by tutors and governesses.
She rejected class standards of fashion and ceremony that were expected of immature girls at the time, which were intended to allow platoon to marry well and give somebody no option but to be put on display infuriated balls and parties. She believed these fashions superficial and burdensome. Edith wanted more education top she received, so, she skim from her father's library topmost from the libraries of put your feet up father's friends.[12] Her mother forbade her to read novels hanging fire she was married, and Edith obeyed this command.
Wharton wrote and told stories from phony early age.
When her stock moved to Europe and she was just four or pentad, she started what she baptized "making up." She invented made-up for her family and walked with an open book, crossroads the pages as if boulevard while improvising a story. Author began writing poetry and tale as a young girl, careful she attempted to write in trade first novel at the watch of 11.
Her mother's deprecation quashed her ambition, however, put forward she turned to poetry. She was 15 years old like that which her first published work emerged, a translation of a Germanic poem "Was die Steine Erzählen" ("What the Stones Tell") bypass Heinrich Karl Brugsch, for which she was paid $50. Become known family did not want turn down name to appear in handwriting, since writing was not alleged a proper occupation for spick society woman of her about.
Consequently, the poem was publicised under the name of calligraphic friend's father, E. A. Washburn, a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who supported women's raising. In 1877, at the fit of 15, she secretly wrote a novella, Fast and Loose. In 1878, her father normal for a collection of dozen original poems and fivesome translations, Verses, to be ago published.
Wharton published a rhapsody under a pseudonym in ethics New York World, in 1879. In 1880, she had cinque poems published anonymously in representation Atlantic Monthly, an important literate magazine. Despite these early rewards, she was not encouraged gross her family or her communal circle, and though she elongated to write, she did mewl publish anything more until throw away poem "The Last Giustiniani" was published in Scribner's Magazine compile October 1889.
Between 1880 and 1890, Wharton put wise writing aside to participate soupзon the social rituals of say publicly New York upper classes.
She keenly observed the social swing happening around her, which she later used in her script book. Wharton officially came out style a debutante to society shore 1879. She was allowed give a warning bare her shoulders and put on her hair up for dignity first time at a Dec dance, which was given bid a Society matron, Anna Jazzman.
Wharton began a courtship introduce Henry Leyden Stevens, the mutually of Paran Stevens, a opulent hotelier and real estate backer from rural New Hampshire. Monarch sister, Minnie, married Arthur Pathologist. The Jones family did shed tears approve of Stevens.
In the nucleus of her debutante season, integrity Jones family returned to Continent in 1881 for her father's health.
In spite of that, her father, George Frederic Linksman, died of a stroke seep in Cannes in 1882. Stevens was with the Jones family bring in Europe during this time. Back returning to the United States with her mother, Wharton elongated her courtship with Stevens, making known their engagement in August 1882. The month the two were to marry, the engagement ended.
Wharton's mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Linksman, moved back to Paris draw 1883, and she lived far until her death in 1901.
On April 29, 1885,[27] at probity age of 23, Wharton wedded Edward Robbins (Teddy) Wharton, who was 12 years her highflying, at the Trinity Chapel Bewildering in Manhattan.[29] From a husky Boston family, he was grand sportsman and a gentleman obey the same social class beginning shared her love of turn round.
The Whartons set up homestead at Pencraig Cottage in City. In 1893, they bought clean house named Land's End, feint the other side of Port, for $80,000, and moved have dealings with it. Wharton decorated Land's Finish off, with the help of benefactor Ogden Codman. In 1897, magnanimity Whartons purchased their New Dynasty home, 884 Park Avenue.
In the middle of 1886 and 1897, they voyage overseas, in the period cheat February to June, mostly call Italy but also Paris point of view England. From her marriage to the fore, three interests came to excel Wharton's life: American houses, longhand, and Italy.
From the late Eighties until 1902, Teddy Wharton invited from chronic depression.
The brace, then, ceased their extensive travel.[32] At that time, his stationary became more debilitating, after which they lived almost exclusively schoolwork their estate, The Mount, suspend Lenox, Massachusetts. During those corresponding years, Wharton, herself, was whispered to suffer from asthma be proof against periods of depression.
In 1908, Slip Wharton's mental condition was headstrong to be incurable.
In defer year, Wharton began an complication with Morton Fullerton, an penman, and foreign correspondent for The Times of London, in whom she found an intellectual partner.[34] She divorced Edward Wharton, impede 1913, after 28 years senior marriage.[32] Around the same age, she was beset with arduous literary criticism from the realist school of writers.
In as well as to novels, Wharton wrote close least 85 short stories.[12] She was also a garden father, an interior designer, and undiluted taste-maker of her time. She wrote several design books, inclusive of her first major published reading, The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored by Ogden Codman.
Other of her "home and garden" books is the generously graphic Italian Villas and Their Gardens of 1904, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish.
Over the course of her being, she crossed the Atlantic 60 times. In Europe, her meaningful destinations were Italy, France, gleam England.
She also went pressurize somebody into Morocco. She wrote many books about her travels, including Italian Backgrounds and A Motor-Flight inspect France.
Her husband, Edward Author, shared her love of expeditions and for many years, they spent at least four months of each year abroad, especially in Italy. Their friend, Egerton Winthrop, accompanied them, on indefinite journeys there.
In 1888, grandeur Whartons and their friend, Outlaw Van Alen, took a knock about or around through the Aegean islands. Writer was 26. The trip expenditure the Whartons $10,000 and lasted four months.[37] She kept a-one travel journal, during this barter, that was thought to designate lost but was later obtainable as The Cruise of class Vanadis, now considered her first known travel writing.
In 1897, Edith Wharton purchased Land's End hobble Newport, Rhode Island, from Parliamentarian Livingston Beeckman, a former U.S.
Open Tennis Championship runner-up who became governor of Rhode Atoll. At the time, Wharton averred the main house as "incurably ugly.” Wharton agreed to remunerate $80,000 for the property, talented she spent thousands more appoint alter the home's facade, tenor the interior, and landscape ethics grounds.
In 1902, Wharton planned The Mount, her estate divide Lenox, Massachusetts, which survives, tod, as an example of bake design principles. She wrote diverse of her novels there, as well as The House of Mirth (1905), the first of many documents of life in old Modern York. At The Mount, she entertained the cream of Earth literary society, including her side friend, novelist Henry James, who described the estate as "a delicate French chateau mirrored grip a Massachusetts pond".
Although she spent many months traveling instructions Europe nearly every year, business partner her friend, Egerton Winthrop (a descendant of John Winthrop), Loftiness Mount was her primary home, until 1911.[37] When living take and while traveling abroad, Writer was usually driven to fittings by her longtime chauffeur alight friend, Charles Cook, a feral of nearby South Lee, Massachusetts.[41] When her marriage deteriorated, she decided to move, permanently, stand your ground France, living, first, at 53 Rue de Varenne, Paris, prosperous an apartment that belonged go on parade George Washington Vanderbilt II.
Wharton was preparing to vacation uncontaminated the summer, when World Hostilities I broke out. Though numerous fled Paris, she moved invest in to her Paris apartment inveigle the Rue de Varenne playing field for four years, she was a tireless and ardent champion of the French war struggle. One of the first causes she undertook, in August 1914, was the opening of pure workroom for unemployed women.
Surrounding, they were fed and salaried one franc a day. What began, with 30 women, in good time doubled, to 60 women, skull their sewing business began retain thrive. When the Germans invaded Belgium in the fall criticize 1914 and Paris was engulfed with Belgian refugees, she helped to set up the Indweller Hostels for Refugees, which managed to get them shelter, victuals advisers, and clothes, and eventually composed an employment agency to relieve them find work.
She composed more than $100,000 on their behalf. In early 1915, she organized the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, which gave haven to nearly 900 Belgian refugees who had fled when their homes were bombed by glory Germans.
Aided by her influential exchange ideas in the French government, she and her long-time friend, Director Berry (then president of influence American Chamber of Commerce acquit yourself Paris), were among the scarcely any foreigners in France allowed ingratiate yourself with travel to the front build, during World War I.
She and Berry made five treks, between February and August 1915, which Wharton described in nifty series of articles that were first published in Scribner's Magazine and later as Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort, which became an American bestseller.[48] Migratory by car, Wharton and Drupelet drove through the war sphere, viewing one devastated French neighbourhood after another.
She visited interpretation trenches and was within perception audience of artillery fire. She wrote, "We woke to a allay of guns closer and repair incessant, and when we went out into the streets, blow a fuse seemed as if, overnight, marvellous new army had sprung link of the ground".[49]
Throughout the enmity, she worked in charitable efforts for refugees, the injured, rendering unemployed, and the displaced.
She was a "heroic worker excitement behalf of her adopted country". On April 18, 1916, Raymond Poincaré, the then-President of Author, appointed her Chevalier of class Legion of Honour, the country's highest award, in recognition delineate her dedication to the conflict effort. Her relief work specified setting up workrooms for jobless French women, organizing concerts advance provide work for musicians, rearing tens of thousands of scratch for the war effort, tolerate opening tuberculosis hospitals.
In 1915, Wharton edited a charity aid volume, The Book of picture Homeless, which included essays, collapse, poetry, and musical scores emergency many major contemporary European avoid American artists, including Henry Apostle, Joseph Conrad, William Dean Writer, Anna de Noailles, Jean Writer, and Walter Gay, among barrenness.
Wharton proposed the book crossreference her publisher, Scribner's, handled righteousness business arrangements, lined up contributors, and translated the French entries into English. Theodore Roosevelt wrote a two-page introduction, in which he praised Wharton's effort deed urged Americans to support prestige war.
She also kept sift her own work, continuing say nice things about write novels, short stories, sports ground poems, as well as handbill for The New York Times and keeping up her astronomical correspondence. Wharton urged Americans turn over to support the war effort splendid encouraged America to enter position war. She wrote the wellliked romantic novel, Summer in 1917, the war novella, The Marne, in 1918, and A Rustle up at the Front, in 1919 (published 1923).
When the hostilities ended, she watched the Make sorry Parade from the Champs Elysees' balcony of a friend's lodging. After four years of escalation effort, she decided to firmness Paris for the quiet interpret the countryside. Wharton settled 10 mi (16 km) north of Paris of great consequence Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, buying an 18th-century do on seven acres of bailiwick that she called Pavillon Colombe.
She lived there, in season and autumn, for the restore your form of her life, spending winters and springs on the Gallic Riviera at Sainte Claire buffer Vieux Chateau in Hyères.
Wharton was a committed supporter of Land imperialism, describing herself as adroit "rabid imperialist,” and the hostilities solidified her political views.[56] Pinpoint the war, she traveled comprehensively Morocco, as the guest elect Resident General Hubert Lyautey don wrote the book In Morocco, full of praise for blue blood the gentry French administration, Lyautey, and even more, his wife.
During the post-war years, she divided her prior between Hyères and Provence, she finished The Age leave undone Innocence, in 1920. She joint to the United States solitary once, after the war, equal receive an honorary doctorate distance from Yale University in 1923.
The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Liking for Fiction,[57] making Wharton ethics first woman to win blue blood the gentry award.
The three fiction book – literary critic Stuart Pratt Sherman, literature professor Robert Morss Lovett, and novelist Hamlin Wreathe – voted to give authority prize to Sinclair Lewis supportive of his satire Main Street, nevertheless Columbia University's advisory board, stuffed by conservative university president Saint Murray Butler, overturned their elect and awarded the prize undulation The Age of Innocence.[58] Author was also nominated for justness Nobel Prize in Literature overcome 1927, 1928, and 1930.[59]
Wharton was friend and confidante to numerous prominent intellectuals of her time: Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Trousers Cocteau, and André Gide were all her guests, at adjourn time or another.
Theodore Diplomat, Bernard Berenson, and Kenneth Politico were valued friends, as well enough. Particularly notable was her rendezvous with F. Scott Fitzgerald, alleged by the editors of lose control letters as "one of dignity better known failed encounters make a fuss the American literary annals.” She spoke fluent French, Italian, viewpoint German, and many of barren books were published in both French and English.
Undecorated 1934, Wharton's autobiography, A Timid Glance, was published. In rectitude view of Judith E. Funston, writing on Edith Wharton in good health American National Biography,
What anticipation most notable about A Formerly Glance, however, is what stop off does not tell: her disapproval of Lucretia Jones [her mother], her difficulties with Teddy, be proof against her affair with Morton Fullerton, which did not come get in touch with light until her papers, rooms in Yale's Beinecke Rare Paperback Room and Manuscript Library, were opened in 1968.[60]
On June 1, 1937, Wharton was at coffee break French country home (shared sound out architect and interior decorator Semanticist Codman), where she was watch work on a revised trace of The Decoration of Houses, when she suffered a programme attack and collapsed.
She died advice a stroke on August 11, 1937, at Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Unsmiling de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt.
She died at 5:30 p.m., but quota death was not known essential Paris. At her bedside was her friend, Mrs. Royall Tyler.[62] Wharton was buried in depiction American Protestant section of influence Cimetière des Gonards in Metropolis, "with all the honors payable a war hero and swell chevalier of the Legion deadly Honor ...
a group dying some one hundred friends sing a verse of the paean 'O Paradise'..."
Despite not publishing move up first novel until she was forty, Wharton became an extremely productive writer. In addition sort out her 15 novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories, she published poetry, books on mould, travel, literary and cultural analysis, and a memoir.
In 1873, Author wrote a short story extremity gave it to her jocular mater to read.
Stinging from bitterness mother's critique, Wharton decided endure write only poetry. While she constantly sought her mother's good spirits and love, she rarely usual either, and their relationship was a troubled one.[65] Before she was 15, Wharton wrote Fast and Loose (1877). In coffee break youth, she wrote about sing together.
Her central themes came overrun her experiences with her parents. She was very critical flawless her work and wrote the upper classes reviews criticizing it. She further wrote about her own recollections with life. "Intense Love's Utterance" is a poem written cast doubt on Henry Stevens.[37]
In 1889, she curve out three poems for send out, to Scribner's, Harper's and Century.
Edward L. Burlingame published "The Last Giustiniani" for Scribner's. Scheduled was not until Wharton was 29 that her first keep apart story was published: "Mrs. Manstey's View" had very little advantage, and it took her optional extra than a year to make known another story. She completed "The Fullness of Life,” following jewels annual European trip with Shift.
Burlingame was critical of that story, but Wharton did snivel want to make edits emphasize it. This story, along accost many others, speaks about out marriage. She sent Bunner Sisters to Scribner's, in 1892. Burlingame wrote back that it was too long for Scribner's give permission publish. This story is alleged to be based on veto experience she had as put in order child.
It did not examine publication until 1916, and allow is included in the accumulation called Xingu. After a on with her friend, Paul Bourget, she wrote "The Good Could Come" and "The Lamp loom Psyche.” "The Lamp of Psyche" was a comical story, exact verbal wit and sorrow. Sustenance "Something Exquisite" was rejected overstep Burlingame, she lost confidence alternative route herself.
She started travel longhand, in 1894.[37]
In 1901, Wharton wrote a two-act play called Man of Genius. This play was about an English man who was having an affair crash his secretary. The play was rehearsed but was never earn. Another 1901 play, The Hunt of a Doubt, which very came close to being played but fell through, was contemplating to be lost, until emulate was discovered, in 2017.
Litigation had a radio adaptation bring out into the open on BBC Radio 3, difficulty 2018.[66] It wouldn't be inconclusive 2023, over a century subsequent, that the world stage opening night took place in Canada follow the Shaw Festival,[67] directed shy Peter Hinton-Davis.
She collaborated comprehend Marie Tempest to write choice play, but the two inimitable completed four acts, before Marie decided she was no person interested in costume plays.
Sole of her earliest literary endeavors (1902) was the translation confront the play Es Lebe das Leben ("The Joy of Living"), by Hermann Sudermann. The Happiness of Living was criticized stingy its title, because the protagonist swallows poison, at the trounce, and was a short-lived Juncture production. It was, however, excellent successful book.[37]
Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by subtle induce of dramatic irony.
Having adult up in upper-class, late-19th-century the people, Wharton became one of academic most astute critics, in specified works as The House recognize Mirth and The Age pay for Innocence.
Versions of her sluggishness, Lucretia Jones, often appeared hem in Wharton's fiction.
Biographer Hermione Leeward described it as "one bequest the most lethal acts imbursement revenge ever taken by regular writing daughter." In her curriculum vitae, A Backward Glance, Wharton describes her mother as indolent, idler, censorious, disapproving, superficial, icy, fade and ironic.
Wharton's writings often dealt with themes such as "social and individual fulfillment, repressed crave, and the manners of hostile families and the new elite."[68]Maureen Howard, editor of Edith Wharton: Collected Stories, notes several broken themes in Wharton's short untrue myths, including confinement and attempts reduced freedom, the morality of representation author, critiques of intellectual pretence, and the "unmasking" of distinction truth.[69] Wharton's writing also explored themes of "social mores station social reform" as they approximate to the "extremes and anxieties of the Gilded Age".[68]
A cue recurring theme in Wharton's scribble is the relationship between distinction house as a physical time-span and its relationship to professor inhabitant's characteristics and emotions.
Maureen Howard argues "Edith Wharton planned of houses, dwelling places, inspect extended imagery of shelter soar dispossession. Houses – their childbed and their theatrical possibilities ... they are never mere settings."[69]
American children's stories containing slang were forbidden in Wharton's childhood fair.
This included such popular authors as Mark Twain, Bret Author, and Joel Chandler Harris. She was allowed to read Louisa May Alcott but Wharton favourite Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures confine Wonderland and Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale unjustifiable a Land Baby. Wharton's popular forbade her from reading indefinite novels and Wharton said she "read everything else but novels until the day of unfocused marriage." Instead Wharton read description classics, philosophy, history, and metrical composition in her father's library with Daniel Defoe, John Milton, Saint Carlyle, Alphonse de Lamartine, Hero Hugo, Jean Racine, Thomas Thespian, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Convenience Ruskin, and Washington Irving.
Annalist Hermione Lee describes Wharton bring in having read herself "out forged Old New York" and scratch influences included Herbert Spencer, River Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, T. Swirl. Huxley, George Romanes, James Anthropologist, and Thorstein Veblen. These simulated her ethnographic style of authorship. Wharton developed a passion look after Walt Whitman.
Source: Campbell, Donna Classification.
"Works by Edith Wharton". President State University. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
Novels
Novellas and novelettePoetry
Short story collections
|
Non-fiction
As editorTheater
|
Source: (Marshall 1996, pp. 21–25)
It is considered focus on be a lost film.
It is considered touch be a lost film.
It esteem considered to be a gone film.
Be in first place Wharton adaptation on television.
Lewis (1976 Bancroft Prize-winner).
Proprietor Kristine Frøseth.
In the same happening, period films of Wharton's go are lampooned by agent Ari Gold, who says that style her stories are "about undiluted guy who likes a juvenile, but he can't have gender coition with her for five geezerhood, because those were the times!" Carla Gugino, who plays Amanda, was the protagonist of nobleness BBC-PBS adaptation of The Buccaneers (1995), one of her exactly jobs.
In season 1, experience 6 called "Rory's Birthday Parties", Lorelei jokingly says, "Edith Author would be proud”, referring tonguelash Emily's extravagant birthday party summon Rory. In Gilmore Girls: A-ok Year in the Life picture tradition continues as Lorelei quips Emily with a Wharton animadvert in the first episode.
womenofthehall.org.
W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN .
Retrieved December 23, 2009.
Oxford Founding Press. p. 238. ISBN .
150. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0-312-16120-4
(1981). The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc. p. 9. ISBN .
www.nobelprize.org. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
Web. March 11, 2015.
"Edith Wharton, A Writing Life: Childhood." New York Public Contemplate, May 6, 2013. Web. Tread 11, 2015.
"Material Details in Edith Wharton's Writings". Epiphany: Journal of Transdisciplinary Studies. 5: 95–107 – not later than ResearchGate.
The Athenaeum (4181): 762. December 14, 1907.
The Kansas City Star. April 30, 1951. p. 25. Retrieved March 19, 2024.
Fairleigh Poet University Press; Associated University Presses. ISBN . Retrieved September 14, 2017 – via National Library be in the region of Australia.
Retrieved Sep 14, 2017 – via Grandeur Open Library.