Edith Wharton Biography and List of Works

American author, best known for her stories and ironic novels about upper class people. Wharton's central subjects are the conflict between social and individual fulfilment, repressed sexuality, and the manners of the old families and the 'nouveau riche'. Wharton was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1920). The jury voted for Sinclair Lewis's highly popular book Main Street, but the Columbia University trustees overturned the decision. Lewis dedicated his next work, Arrowsmith, to Wharton.

"I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it."
(from A Backward Glance, 1934)

Edith Wharton was born in New York, N.Y., into a wealthy and socially prominent family. European governesses educated her privately. Her early years Wharton spent with books rather than participating in the activities of high society. In 1885, with no great enthusiasm, she married Edward Wharton, a Boston banker, twelve years her senior. Wharton's role as a wife with social responsibilities and her writing ambitions resulted in nervous collapse. She had begun to compose poems in her teens and was advised that writing might help her recover. Her first book, THE DECORATION OF HOUSES, appeared in 1897. Her husband started to spend money on young women, and show increasing signs of mental instability. In 1906-09 Wharton had an affair with the American journalist Morton Fullerton, the great love of her life. In her letters to Fullerton, published in The Letters of Edith Wharton (1988) she often expresses her hurt feelings when he toys with her affections - ''didn't you see how my heart broke with the thought that, if I had been younger & prettier, everything might have been different.''

From 1906 the Wharton's spent much time in Europe. Although after their divorce in 1913 she maintained a residence in the U.S., she continued to live in France, where she spent the rest of her life. She became a literary hostess to young writers at her Paris apartment and her garden home in the south of France. Among her friends were Henry James, Walter Berry and Bernard Berenson.

During World War I Wharton wrote reports for American newspaper. She assisted in organizing the American Hostel for Refugees, and the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, taking charge of 600 Belgian children who had to leave their orphanage at the time of the German advance. She was also active in fund-raising activities, participating in the production of an illustrated anthology of war writings by prominent authors and artists of the period. Her last visits to the U.S. were in 1913 and 1923. However, many of her works still had American settings. Wharton's favourite writing location was her bedroom. "She used a writing board. Her breakfast was brought to her by Gross, the housekeeper, who almost alone was privy to this innocent secret of the bedchamber. (A secretary picked up the pages from the floor for typing.)" (from Edith Wharton by R.W.B. Lewis, 1975)

In the 1890s Wharton started to contribute to Scribner's Magazine. Her first collection of short stories appeared in the late 1890s. Wharton first gained success with her book THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (1905), the story of a beautiful but poor woman, Lily Bart, trying to survive in the pitiless New York City. It was followed by several other novels set in New York. THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY (1913) is the story of a young ambitious woman. Through the spoilt and selfish heroine Wharton draws a revealing and ironic picture of social behaviour inside the doors of upper class America. "She meant to watch and listen without letting herself go, and she sat very straight and pink, answering promptly but briefly, with the nervous laugh that punctuated all her phrases - saying 'I don't care if I do' when her host ask her to try some grapes, and 'I wouldn't wonder' when she thought any one was trying to astonish her."

Among Wharton's most famous novels is The Age of Innocence, which was filmed in 1993. The story describes the frustrated love of a New York lawyer, Newland Archer, for unconventional, artistic Ellen Olenska, the separated wife of a dissolute Polish count. Wharton contrasts the manner of the New World with those of Old Europe. Finally Archer marries his calculating fiancée May, who represents 19th-century domestic virtues. Archer's decision promotes his family's wealth and underlines the novel's point that individual happiness is secondary to the continuation of the prevailing culture.

Wharton's other major works include the long tale ETHAN FROME (1911) set in impoverished rural New England. THE REEF (1912) shows the influence of Henry James, whom Wharton knew during the last 12 years of his life. During a fit of depression in 1909, James burned most of his personal papers, including his correspondence with Wharton, but the two writers enjoyed each other's company though they weren't lovers. Wharton campaigned to win James the Nobel Prize for Literature, and secretly diverted some of her own royalties to James to help her famous senior colleague in his financial worries.

The novel HUDSON RIVER BRACKETED (1929) and its sequel THE GODS ARRIVE (1932) compares the cultures of Europe with the sections of the U.S. she knew. Wharton also wrote poems, essays, travel books, and her autobiography, A BACKWARD GLANCE (1934). In her short stories Wharton wrote about women in turn-of-the-century America, their loveless marriages, social responsibilities, expensive tastes, and longing for freedom. In ''Autres Temps' one of her female characters admits: "We're shut up in a little tight round of habit and association, just as we're shut up in this room. Remember, I thought I'd got out of it once; but what really happened was that the other people went out, and left me in the same little room. The only difference was that I was there alone. Oh, I've made it habitable now, I'm used to it; but I've lost any illusions I may have had as to an angel's opening the door.''

Wharton's last novel, THE BUCCANEERS (1938), was left unfinished, but her literary executor had the novel published in 1938. Wharton died in France, St.-Brice-sous-Forêt, on August 11, 1937. Marion Mainwaring later completed the Buccaneers, a story about Wharton's own New York City generation.

For further reading: Portrait of Edith Wharton by P. Lubbock (1947); Edith Wharton: A Study of Her Fiction by B. Nevius (1953); Edith Wharton by O. Coolidge (1964); Edith Wharton and Henry James by Millicent Bell (1965); The Two Lives of Edith Wharton by G. Kellogg (1965); Edith Walton: A Critical Interpretation by G. Walton (1970); Edith Wharton by R.W.B. Lewis (1975); Edith Wharton by G.H. Lindberg (1976); Edith Wharton by R.H. Lawson (1977); A Feast of Words by C.G. Wolff (1977); The Female Intruder in the Novels of Edith Wharton by C. Wershoven (1982); No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton by Shari Benstock (1994); The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton, ed. by Millicent Bell (1995)

VERSES, (1878)