Edith Wharton



Edith Wharton (born Edith Newbold Jones, January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.

Early life and marriage
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. 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 years of age, she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years older. From a well-established Boston family, he was a sportsman and gentleman of the same social class and shared her love of travel, although they had little in common intellectually. From the late 1880s until 1902, he suffered acute depression, and the couple ceased their extensive travel. 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. 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.

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


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. When her marriage deteriorated, however, she decided to move permanently to France, living initially at 58 Rue de Varenne, Paris, in an apartment that belonged to George Washington Vanderbilt II. 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. 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.

Later years
The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, 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."

Death
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. She is buried in the American Cemetery in Versailles, France.

Writing style
Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by a subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class pre-World War I 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

 * Novels
 * The Touchstone, 1900
 * The Valley of Decision, 1902
 * Sanctuary, 1903
 * The House of Mirth, 1905
 * Madame de Treymes, 1907
 * The Fruit of the Tree, 1907
 * Ethan Frome, 1911
 * The Reef, 1912
 * The Custom of the Country, 1913
 * Summer, 1917
 * The Marne, 1918
 * The Age of Innocence, 1920 (Pulitzer Prize winner)
 * The Glimpses of the Moon, 1922
 * A Son at the Front, 1923
 * Old New York, 1924
 * The Spark (The 'Sixties), 1924
 * The Mother's Recompense, 1925
 * Twilight Sleep, 1927
 * The Children, 1928
 * Hudson River Bracketed, 1929
 * The Gods Arrive, 1932
 * The Buccaneers, 1938
 * Fast and Loose, 1938 (first novel, written in 1876–1877)
 * Poetry
 * Verses, 1878
 * Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse, 1909
 * Twelve Poems, 1926


 * Short story collections
 * The Greater Inclination, 1899
 * Souls Belated, 1899
 * Crucial Instances, 1901
 * The Reckoning, 1902
 * The Descent of Man and Other Stories, 1903
 * The Other Two, 1904
 * The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories, 1908
 * Tales of Men and Ghosts, 1910
 * Xingu and Other Stories, 1916
 * Old New York, 1924


 * 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
 * The Decoration of Houses, 1897
 * Italian Villas and Their Gardens, 1904
 * Italian Backgrounds, 1905
 * A Motor-Flight Through France, 1908 (travel)
 * France, from Dunkerque to Belfort, 1915 (war)
 * French Ways and Their Meaning, 1919
 * In Morocco, 1920 (travel)
 * The Writing of Fiction, 1925 (essays on writing)
 * A Backward Glance, 1934 (autobiography)


 * As editor
 * The Book of the Homeless, 1916

Cinema
« Although Edith Wharton's fiction was adapted for the cinema quite early in her career, references to films are comparatively scarce in her work »


 * The House of Mirth (La Maison du Brouillard), a 1918 silent film adaptation (6 reels) (of the 1905 novel) directed by French film director Albert Capellani, starring Katherine Harris Barrymore as Lily Bart. It is considered to be a lost film
 * The Glimpses Of The Moon, a 1923 silent film adaptation (7 reels) (of the 1922 novel) directed for Paramount Studios by Allan Dwan, starring Bebe Daniels, David Powell, Nita Naldi and Maurice Costello. It is considered to be a lost film
 * The Age of Innocence, a 1924 silent film adaptation (7 reels) (of the 1920 novel) directed for Warner Brothers by Wesley Ruggles, starring Beverly Bayne and Elliott Dexter. It is considered to be a lost film
 * The Marriage Playground, a 1929 talking film adaptation (70 minutes) (of the 1928 novel The Children) directed for Paramount Studios by Lothar Mendes, starring rising star Fredric March in leading role (as Martin Boyne), Mary Brian (as Judith Wheater), Kay Francis (as Lady Wrench)...
 * The Age of Innocence, a 1934 film adaptation (9 reels / circa 80–90 minutes) (of the 1920 novel) directed for RKO Studios by Philip Moeller, starring Irene Dunne and John Boles.
 * Strange Wives, a 1934 or 1935 film adaptation (8 reels / 75 minutes) (of the 1934 short story Bread Upon the Waters) directed for Universal by Richard Thorpe, starring Roger Pryor (as Jimmy King), June Clayworth (as Nadja), Esther Ralston (as Olga)... It is considered to be a lost film
 * The Old Maid, a 1939 film adaptation (95 minutes) (of the 1924 short novella) directed by Edmund Goulding starring Bette Davis.
 * A 1944 film version of the 1911 novel Ethan Frome starring Joan Crawford was proposed but never came to fruition
 * Ethan Frome (99 minutes) directed by John Madden and released in 1993,
 * The Age of Innocence (138 minutes) directed by Martin Scorsese and released in 1993,
 * The Reef  (88 minutes) directed by Robert Allan Ackerman and released in 1999.
 * The House of Mirth (140 minutes) directed by Terence Davies and released in 2000, starring Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart.

TV

 * 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

Theatre

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

In popular culture

 * In The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Edith Wharton (Clare Higgins) travels across North Africa with Indiana Jones in Chapter 16, Tales of Innocence.


 * 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.


 * A musical version of The Glimpses of the Moon was presented in New York City in the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room in early 2008.


 * Suzanne Vega's seventh studio release Beauty & Crime contains a song named "Edith Wharton's Figurines."


 * "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.


 * In an episode of the CW show Gossip Girl, "The Age of Dissonance", the cast star in a production of Wharton's The Age of Innocence.


 * "Rosedale in Love" (2011) retells the story of "The House of Mirth" from the perspective of Lily's despised Jewish suitor Simon Rosedale.


 * "The Age of Desire" by Jennie Fields (2012) recounts Edith Wharton’s affair at the age of 45 with journalist William Morton Fullerton, her relationship with Walter Van Rensselaer Berry and her ill-fated marriage to Teddy Wharton. The novel incorporates Wharton's actual letters to her governess, secretary, and life-long friend Anna Bahlmann.