Edith Wharton

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Edith Wharton
Edith Newbold Jones Wharton.jpg
Born (1862-01-24)January 24, 1862
New York City, New York
Died August 11, 1937(1937-08-11) (aged 75)
Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France
Occupation Novelist, short story writer, designer
Spouse(s) Edward Wharton (1885–1913)
Signature

Edith Wharton (/ ˈiːdɪθ ˈwɔːrtən/; born Edith Newbold Jones, January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in years 1927, 1928 and 1930.[1]

Biography[edit]

Portrait of Wharton as a girl by Edward Harrison May (1870)

Early life and marriage[edit]

Wharton was born to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander in New York City. She had two brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward. The saying "Keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to her father's family.[2] She was also related to the Rensselaer family, the most prestigious of the old patroon families. She had a lifelong friendship with her Rhinelander niece, landscape architect Beatrix Farrand of Reef Point in Bar Harbor, Maine, and often traveled with Henry James in Europe. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1885, at 23, she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years older. From a well-established Philadelphia family, he was a sportsman and gentleman of the same social class and shared her love of travel. From the late 1880s until 1902, he suffered acute depression, and the couple ceased their extensive travel.[3] At that time his depression manifested as a more serious disorder, after which they lived almost exclusively at The Mount, their estate designed by Edith Wharton. In 1908 her husband's mental state was determined to be incurable. She divorced him in 1913.[3] Around the same time, Edith was overcome with the harsh criticisms leveled by the naturalist writers. Later in 1908 she began an affair with Morton Fullerton, a journalist for The Times, in whom she found an intellectual partner.[4]

In addition to novels, Wharton wrote at least 85 short stories. She was also a garden designer, interior designer, and taste-maker of her time. She wrote several design books, including her first published work, The Decoration of Houses of 1897, co-authored by Ogden Codman. Another is the generously illustrated Italian Villas and Their Gardens of 1904.

Travels[edit]

The Mount, 2006

In 1902 she built The Mount, her estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, which survives today as an example of her design principles. There, Edith Wharton wrote several of her novels, including The House of Mirth (1905), the first of many chronicles of the nature of old New York, and entertained the cream of American literary society, including her close friend, the novelist Henry James. Although she spent many months traveling in Europe nearly every year, The Mount was her primary residence until 1911. When living there and when traveling abroad, Wharton was usually driven to appointments by her longtime chauffeur and friend Charles Cook, a native of nearby South Lee, Massachusetts.[5][6] When her marriage deteriorated, however, she decided to move permanently to France, living initially at 53 Rue de Varenne, Paris, in an apartment that belonged to George Washington Vanderbilt II.

Page from original manuscript of The House of Mirth, in Edith Wharton's hand

Helped by her influential connections to the French government, primarily through Walter Berry (then president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris), she was one of the few foreigners in France allowed to travel to the front lines during the First World War. Wharton described those trips in the series of articles Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort.

Throughout the war she worked tirelessly in charitable efforts for refugees and, in 1916 was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in recognition of her commitment to the displaced. The scope of her relief work included setting up workrooms for unemployed Frenchwomen, organizing concerts to provide work for musicians, opening tuberculosis hospitals and founding the American Hostels for Belgian refugees. In 1916 Wharton edited The Book of the Homeless, composed of writings, art, erotica and musical scores by almost every major contemporary European artist. When World War I ended in 1918 she abandoned her fashionable urban address for the delights of the country at the Pavillon Colombe in nearby Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt.

Wharton was a committed supporter of French imperialism, describing herself as a "rabid imperialist", and the war solidified her political conservatism.[7] After World War I, she travelled to Morocco as the guest of the resident general, Gen. Hubert Lyautey and wrote a book In Morocco, about her experiences. Wharton's writing on her Moroccan travels is full of praise for the French administration and for Lyautey and his wife in particular.

After the war she divided her time between Paris and Hyères, Provence, where she finished The Age of Innocence in 1920.

In 1927 she purchased a villa, Castel Sainte-Claire, on the site of a 17th-century convent, in the hills above Hyères in Provence, where she lived during the winters and springs. She called the villa "Sainte-Claire du Chateau" and filled the garden with cacti and subtropical plants. She returned to the U.S. only once after the war, to receive an honorary doctorate degree from Yale University in 1923.

Photographic portrait of Edith Wharton

Later years[edit]

The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature,[8] making Wharton the first woman to win the award.

Wharton was friend and confidante to many gifted intellectuals of her time: Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau and André Gide were all guests of hers at one time or another. Theodore Roosevelt, Bernard Berenson, and Kenneth Clark were valued friends as well. But her meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald is described by the editors of her letters as "one of the better known failed encounters in the American literary annals." She spoke fluent French (as well as several other languages), 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,

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 Room and Manuscript Library, were opened in 1968.[9]

Wharton's Le Pavilion Colombe,, Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France

Death[edit]

Edith Wharton died of a stroke in 1937 at the domaine Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt. The street is today called rue Edith Wharton.[10][11] She is buried in the American Cemetery in Versailles, France.[3]


Writing style[edit]

Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by a subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class turn-of-the-century society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics, in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.

In addition to writing several respected novels, Wharton produced a wealth of short stories and is particularly well regarded for her ghost stories.

Books[edit]

Novels
Poetry
  • Verses, 1878
  • Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse, 1909
  • Twelve Poems, 1926
Short story collections
  • Here and Beyond, 1926
  • Certain People, 1930
  • Human Nature, 1933
  • The World Over, 1936
  • Ghosts, 1937
  • Roman Fever, 1934
  • "The Angel at the Grave"
Non-fiction
As editor

Adaptations[edit]

Cinema[edit]

TV[edit]

  • Ethan Frome, a 1960 (CBS) TV US adaptation, directed by Alex Segal, starring Sterling Hayden as Ethan Frome, Julie Harris as Mattie Silver and Clarice Blackburn as Zenobia Frome. First Wharton adaptation on television.
  • Looking Back, a 1981 TV US loose adaptation of two biographies of Edith Wharton: A Backward Glance, Wharton's own 1934 autobiography & Edith Wharton, a 1975 biography by R.W.B. Lewis (1976 Bancroft Prize-winner).
  • The House of Mirth, a 1981 TV US adaptation, directed by Adrian Hall, starring William Atherton, Geraldine Chaplin and Barbara Blossom
  • The Buccaneers, a 1995 BBC mini-series, starring Carla Gugino and Greg Wise[13]

Theatre[edit]

  • "The House of Mirth" was adapted as a play in 1906 by Edith Wharton and Clyde Fitch[14][15]
  • "The Age of Innocence" was adapted as a play in 1928. Katharine Cornell played the role of Ellen Olenska.

In popular culture[edit]

  • Edith Wharton is mentioned in the HBO television series Entourage in the third season's 13th episode: Vince is handed a screenplay for Wharton's The Glimpses of the Moon by Amanda, his new agent, for a film to be directed by Sam Mendes. In the same episode, period films of Wharton's work are lampooned by agent Ari Gold, who says that all her stories are "about a guy who likes a girl, but he can't have sex with her for five years, because those were the times!" Carla Gugino, who plays Amanda, was the protagonist of the BBC-PBS adaptation of The Buccaneers (1995), one of her early jobs.
  • "Edith Wharton's Journey" is a radio adaptation, for the NPR series Radio Tales, of the short story "A Journey" from Edith Wharton's collection The Greater Inclination.
  • The American singer and songwriter Suzanne Vega pays homage to Edith Wharton in her song Edith Wharton's Figurines, from her studio album Beauty & Crime.

References[edit]

Footnotes[edit]

  1. Jump up ^ http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/nomination.php?string=wharton&action=simplesearch&submit.x=7&submit.y=1&submit=submit
  2. Jump up ^ Benstock, Shari (1994). No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. New York: Scribner's. p. 26. ISBN 0-292-70274-4. 
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c Davis 2007
  4. Jump up ^ "Edith Wharton's World, Portrait of People and Places". US: National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 23 Dec 2009. 
  5. Jump up ^ Benstock, Shari (2004). No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. University of Texas Press. p. 143. ISBN 0-292-70274-4. 
  6. Jump up ^ Singley, Carol J. (2003). A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton. Oxford University Press. p. 238. ISBN 0-19-513591-1. "Photograph of Edith Wharton, Teddy Wharton, Henry James and Chauffeur Charles Cook" 
  7. Jump up ^ Wegener, Fredrick (December 2000). ""Rabid Imperialist"': Edith Wharton and the Obligations of Empire in Modern American Fiction". American Literature 72 (4): 783–812. 
  8. Jump up ^ Nelson, Randy F. (1981). The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc. p. 9. ISBN 0-86576-008-X. 
  9. Jump up ^ 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.
  10. Jump up ^ "Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France". New York Times. August 13, 1937. Retrieved 2007-07-21. "Edith Wharton, American novelist, died yesterday afternoon at her villa, Pavilion Colombes [sic], near Saint Brice, Seine-et-Oise." 
  11. Jump up ^ Domaine du Pavillon Colombe à Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt (95)
  12. Jump up ^ Wikipedia english / Joan_Crawford / Move to Warner Bros.
  13. ^ Jump up to: a b Marshall, Scott. "Edith Wharton on Film and Television: A History and Filmography." Edith Wharton Review (1996): 15-25. Washington State University. 15 Jan. 2009
  14. Jump up ^ National Library Of Australia / Catalogue / The House of Mirth: The Play of the Novel, Dramatized by Edith Wharton and Clyde Fitch, 1906; edited, with an introd., notes, and appendixes by Glenn Loney
  15. Jump up ^ openlibrary.org / Works / The House of Mirth: The Play of the Novel, Dramatized by Edith Wharton and Clyde Fitch, 1906; edited, with an introd., notes, and appendixes by Glenn Loney

Sources[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • The Letters of Edith Wharton (R. W. B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis, eds.) ISBN 0-02-034400-7, particularly the editorial introductions to the chronological sections, especially for 1902–07, 1911–14, 1919–27, and 1928–37, and the editorial footnotes to the letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (8 June 1925)
  • Novellas and Other Writings (Cynthia Griffin Wolff, ed.) (The Library of America, 1990) ISBN 978-0-940450-53-0, which contains her autobiography, A Backward Glance.
  • Twilight Sleep (R. F.Godfrey, ed.) ISBN 0-684-83964-4
  • Benstock, Shari (1994) No Gifts From Chance: a biography of Edith Wharton. New York: Scribner's ISBN 0-292-70274-4
  • Edith Wharton's French Riviera (2002) Philippe Collas and Eric Villedary, Paris, New York : Flammarion/Rizzoli (ISBN 2-84110-161-4)
  • Lee, Hermione (2007) Edith Wharton. London: Chatto & Windus ISBN 0-7011-6665-7; New York: Knopf
  • Lewis, R. W. B. (1975) Edith Wharton: a biography New York: Harper & Row ISBN 0-06-012603-5
  • Lowry, Elizabeth (December 9, 2011). "What Edith Knew: Freeing Wharton from the Master's Shadow". Harper's Magazine 317 (1903): 96–100, 102. 
  • Wolff, Cynthia Griffin (1977) A Feast of Words Oxford. ISBN 0-19-502117-7

External links[edit]

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