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Edith Newbold Jones was born into the wealthy family of George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Rhinelander on 24 January 1862 in New York City. She had two brothers, Frederic and Henry “Harry” Edward. To escape the bustling city, the family spent summers at ‘Pencraig’ on the shores of Newport Harbour in Newport, Rhode Island. When Edith was four years old they moved to Europe, spending the next five years traveling throughout Italy, Spain, Germany and France. Back in New York young Edith continued her education under private tutors. She learned French and German and a voracious reader, she studied literature, philosophy, science, and art which would also become a favourite subject of hers. She also started to write short stories and poetry. Fast and Loose was published in 1877 and Verses a collection of poems privately published in 1878. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the editor of Atlantic Monthly William Dean Howells are said to have read and been impressed by these early works.
After Edith made her debut into society in 1879, the Jones family again traveled to Europe—George Jones was ill and was to take a rest cure in Cannes on the French Riviera. It was to no avail however and he died there on 15 March 1882. While in Bar Harbor, Maine the next year Edith met Walter Berry who would become a lifetime friend. On 29 April 1885 Edith married banker Edward “Teddy” Robbins Wharton in Trinity Chapel, New York. They honeymooned in Europe and for the next few years traveled extensively together although the union would prove to be unhappy. Living in New York on Park Avenue near Central Park, Wharton had her first poems published in Scribner’s Magazine. In 1891 they also printed the first of many of her short stories “Mrs. Manstey’s View”. For the next forty years or so they, along with other publications including Atlantic Monthly, Century Magazine, Harper’s, Lippincott’s and the Saturday Evening Post would publish her stories.
When Edith purchased ‘Land’s End’ in Newport she actively became involved in its remodeling and redesigning. She also co-authored The Decoration of Houses (1897) with architect Ogden Codman. Her next publication was a collection of short stories, The Greater Inclination (1899). Others include Crucial Instances (1901), The Descent of Man and Other Stories (1904), The Hermit and the Wild Woman (1908), Xingu and Other Stories (1917), and The World Over (1936). She also wrote ghost stories collected in Tales of Men and Ghosts (1910), Here and Beyond (1926), and Ghosts (1937), many previously appearing in magazines. After Edith’s mother Lucretia died in 1901 she began the designing of and oversaw the construction of her new home ‘The Mount’ in Lenox, Massachusetts. A stunning example of a Palladin-style English country home, it overlooks Laurel Lake. Edith’s niece Beatrix Ferrand, a landscape architect, helped design the extensive gardens and grass terraces on the property. It is now a National Historic Landmark.
However busy she was with the planning and building of her home, Wharton continued to write. Her next novels were The Valley of Decision (1902) and Sanctuary (1903), published the same year she met Henry James, who would become a good friend and confidante. House of Mirth (1905) became that years’ best-seller. Madame de Treymes (1907) was followed by The Fruit of the Tree (1907) which appeared the same year the Whartons moved from their Park Avenue home to 53 Rue de Varenne in Paris. They soon bought a car and were motoring all over France, which prompted her collection of travel essays A Motor-Flight through France (1908). While in Paris, Wharton met journalist Morton Fullerton, who would become a close friend and was instrumental in getting some of her works published in France. They also had an affair that lasted three years. Teddy had a mistress and had been embezzling funds from Edith to support her. They were divorced in 1913.
http://www.online-literature.com/wharton/
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