Edith Wharton

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EW , early twentieth-century novelist of American nationality, upper-middle-class status and subject-matter, and European cultural interests, has suffered in critical estimation by being ranked second to her friend and contemporary Henry James . Writing through the modernist period, she remained traditional in her techniques. Most of her stories revolve around the dilemmas faced by women in a society which offers them little while depending on their compliance. She produced non-fictional prose, short fiction, travel writing, autobiography, and letters as well as the novels for which she is best known. She is currently enjoying a boom in reputation.
Monochrome cabinet photograph of Edith Wharton, taken by E. F. Cooper, at Newport, Rhode Island. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. She is seated looking at the camera, in a jacket with leg-of-mutton sleeves and tight bodice, with a fall of lace in front, and a small hat with two feathers sticking up. She has two little dogs on her lap.

Milestones

24 January 1862

Edith Newbold Jones (later EW ) was born in New York City, the third child but first daughter in a family spread over more than a decade.
McDowell, Margaret B. Edith Wharton. Twayne.
xv

1878

The teenage Edith Jones (later EW ) issued her first publication, a thirty-two-page volume entitled Verses, through C. E. Hammett, Jr , at Newport, Rhode Island.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
9

January-November 1905

EW 's well-known novel The House of Mirth was serialized in Scribner's Magazine. It appeared in book form on 14 October 1905.
The title is quoted from a verse in the book of Ecclesiastes which associates the house of mirth with fools.
McDowell, Margaret B. Edith Wharton. Twayne.
149
McDowell, Margaret B. Edith Wharton. Twayne.
27

11 August 1937

EW died of a stroke at her house at Pavillon Colombe at Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, near Paris.
McDowell, Margaret B. Edith Wharton. Twayne.
xvii
Lee, Hermione. “Estates of mind”. Guardian Unlimited.
5

By early October 1938

The year following EW 's death her novel The Buccaneers was issued posthumously and unfinished: in it she returned to the New York of the 1870s.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
1914 (8 October 1938): 652
McDowell, Margaret B. Edith Wharton. Twayne.
106

Biography

Birth and Background

24 January 1862

Edith Newbold Jones (later EW ) was born in New York City, the third child but first daughter in a family spread over more than a decade.
McDowell, Margaret B. Edith Wharton. Twayne.
xv

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