Editing Edith Wharton (section)

==Biography==

===Early life===
[[File:Edward Harrison May - Edith Wharton - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Portrait of Wharton as a child by [[Edward Harrison May]] (1870)]]

Edith Newbold Jones was born on January 24, 1862, to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, at their [[brownstone]] at 14 West Twenty-third Street in [[New York City]].{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=16}}{{sfn|Dwight|1994|pp=12–13}} To her friends and family, she was known as "Pussy Jones".{{sfn|Minkel|2012}} She had two elder brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=16}} Frederic married [[Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones|Mary Cadwalader Rawle]]; their daughter was landscape architect [[Beatrix Farrand]]. Edith was [[baptized]] April 20, 1862, [[Easter Sunday]], at [[Grace Church (Manhattan)|Grace Church]].{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=16}}

Wharton's paternal family, the Joneses, were a very wealthy and socially prominent family, having made their money in real estate.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=21}} The saying "[[keeping up with the Joneses]]" is said to refer to her father's family.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=22}}{{sfn|Benstock|1994|p=216}} She was related to the [[Manor of Rensselaerswyck|Rensselaers]], the most prestigious of the old [[patroon]] families, who had received land grants from the former Dutch government of New York and New Jersey. Her father's first cousin was [[Caroline Schermerhorn Astor]].{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=34}} Fort Stevens, in New York, was named for Wharton's maternal great-grandfather, [[Ebenezer Stevens]], a [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]] hero and general.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=18}}

Wharton was born during the [[American Civil War|Civil War]].  However, in describing her family life, Wharton does not mention the war, except that their travels to Europe after the war were due to the depreciation of American currency.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=16}}{{sfn|Lee|2008|pp=7–8}} From 1866 to 1872, the Jones family visited [[France]], [[Italy]], [[Germany]], and [[Spain]].<ref name="Chronology">{{cite web |title=Chronology |website=The Mount: Edith Wharton's Home |url=http://www.edithwharton.org/edith-wharton/chronology/ |access-date=December 4, 2014 |archive-date=May 6, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160506085111/http://www.edithwharton.org/edith-wharton/chronology/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> During her travels, the young Edith became fluent in [[French (language)|French]], [[German (language)|German]], and [[Italian (language)|Italian]]. At the age of nine, she suffered from [[typhoid fever]], which nearly killed her, while the family was at a spa in the [[Black Forest]].{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=16}} After the family returned to the United States in 1872, they spent their winters in New York City and their summers in [[Newport, Rhode Island]].<ref name="Chronology"/> While in Europe, she was educated by tutors and [[governess]]es. She rejected the standards of fashion and [[etiquette]] that were expected of young girls at the time, which were intended to allow women to marry well and to be put on display at balls and parties. She considered these fashions superficial and oppressive. Edith wanted more education than she received, so she read from her father's library and from the libraries of her father's friends.<ref name="W. W. Norton & Company, Inc">{{cite book|last1=Baym|first1=Nina|year=2013|title=The Norton Anthology of American Literature |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0-393-91885-4|edition=8th}}</ref> Her mother forbade her to read novels until she was married, and Edith obeyed this command.{{sfn|Lee|2008}}

===Early writing===
[[File:Edith Wharton by Edward Harrison May.jpg|thumb|upright|Edith Wharton by [[Edward Harrison May]]]]

Wharton wrote and told stories from an early age.{{sfn|Lee|2008|pp=13–14}} When her family moved to Europe and she was just four or five, she started what she called "making up."{{sfn|Lee|2008|pp=13–14}} She invented stories for her family and walked with an open book, turning the pages as if reading while improvising a story.{{sfn|Lee|2008|pp=13–14}} Wharton began writing poetry and fiction as a young girl, and she attempted to write her first novel at the age of 11.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=36}} Her mother's criticism quashed her ambition, however, and she turned to poetry.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=36}} She was 15 years old when her first published work appeared, a translation of a German poem "Was die Steine Erzählen" ("What the Stones Tell") by [[Heinrich Karl Brugsch]], for which she was paid $50. Her family did not want her name to appear in print, since writing was not considered a proper occupation for a society woman of her time. Consequently, the poem was published under the name of a friend's father, E. A. Washburn, a cousin of [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], who supported women's education.{{sfn|Benstock|1994|p=35}} In 1877, at the age of 15, she secretly wrote a [[novella]], ''Fast and Loose''. In 1878, her father arranged for a collection of two dozen original poems and five translations, ''Verses,'' to be privately published.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=43}} Wharton published a poem under a pseudonym in the ''New York World,'' in 1879.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=44}} In 1880, she had five poems published anonymously in the ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'', an important literary magazine.{{sfn|Benstock|1994|p=38}} Despite these early successes, she was not encouraged by her family or her social circle, and though she continued to write, she did not publish anything more until her poem "The Last Giustiniani" was published in ''Scribner's Magazine'' in October 1889.{{sfn|Benstock|1994|p=40}}

=== The "debutante" years ===
Between 1880 and 1890, Wharton put her writing aside to participate in the social rituals of the New York upper classes. She keenly observed the social changes happening around her, which she later used in her writing.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=47}} Wharton officially came out as a [[debutante]] to society in 1879.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=58}} She was allowed to bare her shoulders and wear her hair up for the first time at a December dance, which was given by a Society matron, Anna Morton.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=58}} Wharton began a courtship with Henry Leyden Stevens, the son of Paran Stevens, a wealthy hotelier and real estate investor from rural New Hampshire. His sister, Minnie, married [[Arthur Paget (British Army officer)|Arthur Paget]].{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=60}} The Jones family did not approve of Stevens.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=60}}

In the middle of her debutante season, the Jones family returned to Europe in 1881 for her father's health.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=61}} Still, her father, George Frederic Jones, died of a stroke in Cannes in 1882.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=35}} Stevens was with the Jones family in Europe during this time.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=61}} After returning to the United States with her mother, Wharton continued her courtship with Stevens, announcing their engagement in August 1882.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=61}} The month the two were to marry, the engagement ended.{{sfn|Lewis|1975|pp=44–47}}

Wharton's mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones, moved back to Paris in 1883, and she lived there until her death in 1901.{{sfn|Lee|2008|pp=7–8}}

===1880s–1900s===
[[File:The Mount from the Flower Garden by David Dashiell.jpg|thumb|left|[[The Mount (Lenox, Massachusetts)|The Mount]], 2006]]

On April 29, 1885,<ref>New York, New York, Marriage Index 1866–1937</ref> at the age of 23, Wharton married Edward Robbins (Teddy) Wharton, who was 12 years her senior, at the [[Trinity Chapel Complex]] in Manhattan.{{sfn|Lee|2008|pp=74–75}}<ref>U.S., Newspaper Extractions from the Northeast, 1704–1930</ref> From a well-established Boston family, he was a sportsman and a gentleman of the same social class and shared her love of travel. The Whartons set up house at Pencraig Cottage in Newport.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=81}} In 1893, they bought a house named Land's End, on the other side of Newport, for $80,000, and moved into it.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=81}} Wharton decorated Land's End, with the help of designer [[Ogden Codman]]. In 1897, the Whartons purchased their New York home, 884 [[Park Avenue]].{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=82}} Between 1886 and 1897, they traveled overseas, in the period from February to June, mostly visiting Italy but also Paris and England.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=82}} From her marriage onwards, three interests came to dominate Wharton's life: American houses, writing, and Italy.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=81}}

From the late 1880s until 1902, Teddy Wharton suffered from chronic depression. The couple, then, ceased their extensive travel.<ref name="Davis">{{Harvnb|Davis|2007}}</ref> At that time, his depression became more debilitating, after which they lived almost exclusively at their estate, [[The Mount (Lenox, Massachusetts)|The Mount]], in Lenox, Massachusetts. During those same years, Wharton, herself, was said to suffer from asthma and periods of depression.{{sfn|Lee|2008|pp=78–81}}

In 1908, Teddy Wharton's mental condition was determined to be incurable. In that year, Wharton began an affair with [[William Morton Fullerton|Morton Fullerton]], an author, and foreign correspondent for ''[[The Times]]'' of London, in whom she found an intellectual partner.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/wharton/whar3.htm |title= Edith Wharton's World, Portrait of People and Places| publisher = National Portrait Gallery |access-date= December 23, 2009 | location = [[United States|US]]}}</ref> She divorced Edward Wharton, in 1913, after 28 years of marriage.<ref name="Davis"/> Around the same time, she was beset with harsh literary criticism from the [[Naturalism (literature)|naturalist]] school of writers.

[[File:Edith Wharton as a young woman, ca. 1889 (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright|Edith Wharton {{Circa|1889}}]]

In addition to novels, Wharton wrote at least 85 short stories.<ref name="W. W. Norton & Company, Inc"/> She was also a [[garden designer]], an [[interior design]]er, and a taste-maker of her time. She wrote several design books, including her first major published work, ''[[The Decoration of Houses]]'' (1897), co-authored by [[Ogden Codman]]. Another of her "home and garden" books is the generously illustrated ''Italian Villas and Their Gardens'' of 1904, illustrated by [[Maxfield Parrish]].

===Travels and life abroad===

Over the course of her life, she crossed the Atlantic 60 times.{{sfn|Wright|1995|pp=xvii–xviii}} In Europe, her primary destinations were Italy, France, and England. She also went to Morocco. She wrote many books about her travels, including ''Italian Backgrounds'' and ''A Motor-Flight through France''.

Her husband, Edward Wharton, shared her love of travel and for many years, they spent at least four months of each year abroad, mainly in Italy. Their friend, Egerton Winthrop, accompanied them, on many journeys there.{{sfn|Wright|1995|p=3}} In 1888, the Whartons and their friend, James Van Alen, took a cruise through the [[Aegean islands]]. Wharton was 26. The trip cost the Whartons $10,000 and lasted four months.{{sfn|Lewis|1975|p={{page needed|date=May 2021}}}} She kept a travel journal, during this trip, that was thought to be lost but was later published as ''The Cruise of the Vanadis'', now considered her earliest known travel writing.{{sfn|Wright|1995|p=17}}

[[File:Land’s End, Newport, RI.jpg|thumb|left|Land's End, Newport, Rhode Island]]

In 1897, Edith Wharton purchased Land's End in Newport, Rhode Island, from [[Robert Livingston Beeckman]], a former U.S. Open Tennis Championship runner-up who became governor of Rhode Island. At the time, Wharton described the main house as "incurably ugly." Wharton agreed to pay $80,000 for the property, and she spent thousands more to alter the home's facade, decorate the interior, and landscape the grounds.

[[File:The House of Mirth page of original manuscript Edith Wharton.jpg|thumb|upright|Page from original [[manuscript]] of ''[[The House of Mirth]]'', in Edith Wharton's hand]]

In 1902, Wharton designed [[The Mount (Lenox, Massachusetts)|The Mount]], her estate in [[Lenox, Massachusetts]], which survives, today, as an example of her design principles. She wrote several of her novels there, including ''[[The House of Mirth]]'' (1905), the first of many chronicles of life in old New York. At The Mount, she entertained the cream of American literary society, including her close friend, novelist [[Henry James]], who described the estate as "a delicate French chateau mirrored in a Massachusetts pond".{{sfn|Benstock|1994|pp=129–130}} Although she spent many months traveling in Europe nearly every year, with her friend Egerton Winthrop (a descendant of [[John Winthrop]]), The Mount was her primary residence, until 1911.{{sfn|Lewis|1975|p={{page needed|date=May 2021}}}} When living there and while traveling abroad, Wharton was usually driven to appointments by her longtime [[chauffeur]] and friend, Charles Cook, a native of nearby [[South Lee, Massachusetts]].{{sfn|Benstock|1994|p=143}}<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JYKs6vJG678C&pg=PA238 |quote=Photograph of Edith Wharton, Teddy Wharton, Henry James and Chauffeur Charles Cook|title= A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton|first= Carol J. |last=Singley |publisher=Oxford University Press|year= 2003|page=238|isbn=0-19-513591-1}}</ref> When her marriage deteriorated, she decided to move, permanently, to France, living, first, at 53 Rue de Varenne, [[Paris]], in an apartment that belonged to [[George Washington Vanderbilt II]].

Wharton was preparing to vacation for the summer, when [[World War I]] broke out. Though many fled Paris, she moved back to her Paris apartment on the Rue de Varenne and for four years, she was a tireless and ardent supporter of the French war effort.{{sfn|Dwight|1994|p=183}} One of the first causes she undertook, in August 1914, was the opening of a workroom for unemployed women.  Here, they were fed and paid one franc a day. What began, with 30 women, soon doubled, to 60 women, and their sewing business began to thrive.{{sfn|Dwight|1994|pp=183–184}} When the [[German invasion of Belgium (1914)|Germans invaded Belgium in the fall of 1914]] and Paris was flooded with Belgian refugees, she helped to set up the American Hostels for Refugees, which managed to get them shelter, meals, and clothes, and eventually created an employment agency to help them find work.{{sfn|Dwight|1994|pp=188–189}} She collected more than $100,000 on their behalf.{{sfn|Wolff|1995|p=253}} In early 1915, she organized the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, which gave shelter to nearly 900 Belgian refugees who had fled when their homes were bombed by the Germans.{{sfn|Dwight|1994|p=190}}

Aided by her influential connections in the French government, she and her long-time friend, [[Walter Van Rensselaer Berry|Walter Berry]] (then president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris), were among the few foreigners in France allowed to travel to the front lines, during World War I. She and Berry made five journeys, between February and August 1915, which Wharton described in a 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.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=486}}<ref>''Edith Wharton'' p.&nbsp;486. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. {{ISBN|978-0-375-40004-9}}</ref> Travelling by car, Wharton and Berry drove through the war zone, viewing one devastated French village after another. She visited the trenches and was within earshot of artillery fire. She wrote, "We woke to a noise of guns closer and more incessant, and when we went out into the streets, it seemed as if, overnight, a new army had sprung out of the ground".<ref>"In Argonne", Chapter 2 of ''Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort'', published in ''Edith Wharton Abroad: Selected Travel Writings, 1888–1920'', p. 150. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. {{ISBN|0-312-16120-4}}</ref>

Throughout the war, she worked in charitable efforts for refugees, the injured, the unemployed, and the displaced. She was a "heroic worker on behalf of her adopted country".{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=454}} On April 18, 1916, [[Raymond Poincaré]], the then-President of France, appointed her Chevalier of the [[Legion of Honour]], the fifth class of the country's highest honour, in recognition of her dedication to the war effort.{{sfn|Wolff|1995|p=253}}{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=9}} Her relief work included setting up workrooms for unemployed French women, organizing concerts to provide work for musicians, raising tens of thousands of dollars for the war effort, and opening [[tuberculosis]] hospitals. In 1915, Wharton edited a charity benefit volume, ''[[The Book of the Homeless]],'' which included essays, art, poetry, and musical scores by many major contemporary European and American artists, including [[Henry James]], [[Joseph Conrad]], [[William Dean Howells]], [[Anna de Noailles]], [[Jean Cocteau]], and [[Walter Gay]], among others. Wharton proposed the book to her publisher, Scribner's, handled the 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 and urged Americans to support the war.{{sfn|Dwight|1994|pp=202–203}} She also kept up her own work, continuing to write novels, short stories, and poems, as well as reporting for ''The New York Times'' and keeping up her enormous correspondence.{{sfn|Lee|2008|p=450}} Wharton urged Americans to support the war effort and encouraged America to enter the war.{{sfn|Dwight|1994|p=201}} She wrote the popular romantic novel, ''[[Summer]]'' in 1917, the war novella, ''The Marne,'' in 1918, and ''A Son at the Front,'' in 1919 (published 1923). When the war ended, she watched the Victory Parade from the Champs Elysees' balcony of a friend's apartment. After four years of intense effort, she decided to leave Paris for the quiet of the countryside. Wharton settled {{convert|10|mi|abbr=on}} north of Paris in [[Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt]], buying an 18th-century house on seven acres of land that she called Pavillon Colombe. She lived there, in summer and autumn, for the rest of her life, spending winters and springs on the French Riviera at Sainte Claire du Vieux Chateau in [[Hyères]].{{sfn|Dwight|1994|p=210}}

Wharton was a committed supporter of [[French imperialism]], describing herself as a "rabid imperialist", and the war solidified her political views.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wegener|first= Fredrick |title="Rabid Imperialist"': Edith Wharton and the Obligations of Empire in Modern American Fiction|journal= American Literature |volume=72|issue= 4|pages=783–812|date=December 2000|doi=10.1215/00029831-72-4-783|s2cid= 162758720 }}</ref> After the war, she traveled to Morocco, as the guest of Resident General [[Hubert Lyautey]] and wrote the book ''In Morocco'', full of praise for the French administration, Lyautey, and particularly, his wife.

During the post-war years, she divided her time between [[Hyères]] and [[Provence]], where she finished ''[[The Age of Innocence]],'' in 1920. She returned to the United States only once, after the war, to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1923.

===Later years===
''[[The Age of Innocence]]'' (1920) won the [[1921 Pulitzer Prize]] for Fiction,<ref>{{cite book|last= Nelson|first= Randy F.|title= The Almanac of American Letters|location= Los Altos, California|publisher= William Kaufmann, Inc.|year= 1981|page= [https://archive.org/details/almanacofamerica00nels/page/9 9]|isbn= 0-86576-008-X|url= https://archive.org/details/almanacofamerica00nels/page/9}}</ref> making Wharton the first woman to win the award. The three fiction judges – literary critic [[Stuart P. Sherman|Stuart Pratt Sherman]], literature professor [[Robert Morss Lovett]], and novelist [[Hamlin Garland]] – voted to give the prize to [[Sinclair Lewis]] for his satire ''Main Street'', but Columbia University's advisory board, led by conservative university president [[Nicholas Murray Butler]], overturned their decision and awarded the prize to ''The Age of Innocence''.<ref>"Reader's Almanac: A Controversial Pulitzer Prize Brings Edith Wharton and Sinclair Lewis Together." Library of America, June 28, 2011. Web. March 11, 2015.</ref> Wharton was also nominated for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] in 1927, 1928, and 1930.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=10128|title=Nomination Database – Literature|website=www.nobelprize.org|access-date=September 14, 2017}}</ref>

Wharton was friend and confidante to many prominent intellectuals of her time: Henry James, [[Sinclair Lewis]], [[Jean Cocteau]], and [[André Gide]] were all her guests, at one time or another. Theodore Roosevelt, [[Bernard Berenson]], and [[Kenneth Clark]] were valued friends, as well. Particularly notable was her meeting with [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]], described by the editors of her letters as "one of the better known failed encounters in the American literary annals." She spoke fluent French, Italian, and German, and many of her books were published in both French and English.

In 1934, Wharton's [[autobiography]], ''A Backward Glance,'' was published. In the view of Judith E. Funston, writing on Edith Wharton in ''American National Biography'', <blockquote>What is most notable about ''A Backward Glance,'' however, is what it does not tell: her criticism of Lucretia Jones [her mother], her difficulties with Teddy, and her affair with Morton Fullerton, which did not come to light until her papers, deposited in Yale's [[Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library|Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library]], were opened in 1968.<ref>Judith E. Funston, "Edith Wharton", in ''American National Biography''; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; Vol. 23, pp. 111–112. {{ISBN|0-19-512802-8}}.</ref></blockquote>
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===Death===
[[File:Gardens at Pavilion Colombe Edith Wharton's villa.jpg|thumb|Wharton's ''Le Pavillon Colombe'', [[Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt]], France]]
[[File:Tombe Edith WHARTON, cimetière de Gonnards à VERSAILLES.jpg|thumb|right|Grave of Edith Wharton]]
On June 1, 1937, Wharton was at her French country home (shared with architect and interior decorator [[Ogden Codman]]), where she was at work on a revised edition of ''The Decoration of Houses'', when she suffered a heart attack and collapsed.{{sfn|Benstock|1994|p=86}}
 
She died of a [[stroke]] on August 11, 1937, at ''Le Pavillon Colombe'', her 18th-century house on [[Rue de Montmorency]] in [[Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt]]. She died at 5:30&nbsp;p.m., but her death was not known in Paris. At her bedside was her friend, [[Elisina Palamidessi de Castelvecchio Tyler|Mrs. Royall Tyler]].<ref>"Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France". ''The New York Times'', August 13, 1937. Web. March 11, 2015.</ref> Wharton was buried in the American Protestant section of the [[Cimetière des Gonards]] in Versailles, "with all the honors owed a war hero and a chevalier of the Legion of Honor ... a group of some one hundred friends sang a verse of the hymn 'O Paradise'..."{{sfn|Benstock|1994|p=456}}