Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years her senior, in 1885. He was a well-established banker and a sportsman. The initial years of their marriage were happy and the couple travelled together a lot. Her husband then started suffering from acute depression which took a toll on their married life.

She began an affair with Morton Fullerton, a journalist, in 1908.

She divorced Edward after 28 years of marriage in 1913.

Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander on January 24, 1862, in New York during the Civil War. She had two older brothers. Her mother was a cold and uncaring woman and Edith had a troubled relationship with her.

Her family travelled frequently, and she made her first journey to Europe at the age of four in 1866. Over the next six years, the family visited France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, and as a result of her travels, she became fluent in French, German, and Italian.

She received her primary education from tutors and governesses, and displayed an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Unsatisfied with the education she received, she started reading books from her father’s library on her own.

She began writing short stories when she was six but never received any encouragement from her mother. So she decided to just write poetry. She would struggle for several years as a writer before finally receiving the acclaim she deserved.

In 1885, she married Edward Wharton, a wealthy banker. She started writing earnestly only after marriage and submitted three poems for publication in 1889 of which one was selected.

Her struggles as a writer continued though she never gave up. During this time she became friends with people like Henry James, Egerton Winthrop, Walter Berry, William Brownell and Edward Burlingame who recognized her skills and encouraged her to write.

Edith Wharton finally found her first big success in 1905 with the publication of the novel ‘The House of Mirth’. The story of a well-born but poor woman of the high society of New York City appealed to the readers and became a bestseller.

She wrote many other novels in rapid succession and found even greater success with ‘Ethan Frome’, a novel published in 1911. Set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, it told the tragic tale of an unhappily married farmer who falls in love with another woman. Elmer Davis once called the book "the last great American love story".

She was living in Paris when the World War I broke out. She opened a workroom for unemployed women and started a sewing business which thrived over time. When Germans invaded Belgium and the Belgian refugees flooded Paris, she helped to set up the American Hostels for Refugees.

Her novel ‘Ethan Frome’, that tells the tale of an unhappy man who is trapped between the moral duties towards his wife and the passionate love he feels for another woman, is one of her best known novels. The novel was adapted into a film, ‘Ethan Frome’, in 1993.

Her Pulitzer Prize winning novel ‘The Age of Innocence’ is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s, during the so-called Gilded Age. It revolves around a young, popular, and successful lawyer who is trapped in a loveless marriage and is in love with another woman who he can never possess.