Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, short story writer and designer.
Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones to parents George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander. She had two brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward. The saying "Keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to the family of her father. She combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a bril...
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Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, short story writer and designer.
Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones to parents George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander. She had two brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward. The saying "Keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to the family of her father. She combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous and incisive novels and short stories. As such, she was well-acquainted with many of her era's literary and public figures, including Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt.
In 1885, at 23 years of age, she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, who was twelve years her senior. From a well-established Boston family, he was a sportsman and a gentleman of her social class and shared her love of travel, although they had little in common intellectually. He began spending money on younger women and this began to...
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