6/5/2023 0 Comments Wharton writing challenge![]() ![]() Despite her natural shyness, she was a social success. Worried about Edith, her parents decided that she should make her debut in society. She spent her time studying, reading, and writing and was indifferent to people her own age. A year later, when Edith was only sixteen years old, she completed a 30,000 word novella entitled Fast and Loose, a story about manners that mocks high society.Īt the age of seventeen, Edith was immersed in her books. Edith was fascinated with stories and began composing them herself when she was a child she called the process "making-up." Her parents did not encourage her writing however, after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recommended that several of Edith's poems be published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, her parents recognized her talent and had a volume of her poems (entitled Verses) privately published. She read all of Johann Goethe's plays and poems and the poetry of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. She read English and French literature by Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Jean Racine, Jean La Fontaine, and Victor Hugo. The books in her father's large library became her passion. She became proficient in French, German, and Italian. From the beginning of her life, Edith was immersed in a society noted for its manners, taste, snobbishness, and long list of social do's and don'ts.Įdith did not attend school according to the custom of the day for well-to-do young women, she was taught at home by her governess and tutors. The Jones family frequently took trips to the country and to Europe. Because her brothers went to boarding school, and so were often away from home, Edith was essentially raised as an only child in a brownstone mansion on West Twenty-third Street in New York City. Edith had two older brothers: Frederic Rhinelander Jones (Freddie), sixteen years older than her, and Henry Edward Jones (Harry), eleven years older. Her ancestry was of the best English and Dutch strains. Her family on both sides was established, old-money New York business aristocracy. Wharton's personal experiences, opinions, and passions influenced her writing.Įdith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862, in New York City to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones. Wharton's protagonists challenge social taboos, but are unable to overcome the barriers of social convention. ![]() Her protagonists are most often tragic heroes or heroines portrayed as intelligent and emotional people who want more out of life. ![]() Edith Wharton, an American author and Pulitzer Prize winner, is known for her ironic and polished prose about the aristocratic New York society into which she was born. ![]()
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