Editing Edith Wharton (section)

===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}}