Hello Steemians!
Welcome to today's episode of the "Today in History" serial, where I bring you daily historical facts and events of the current date.
On January 24, 1862. in New York, Edith Wharton, the American novelist and writer was born.
She was born Edith Newbold Jones, during the Civil War, to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander and the Saying "keeping up with the Joneses" is referred to the family on her father's side.
She had two brothers, the eleven years older Henry Edward and the sixteen years older Frederic Rhinelander.
In her childhood she her friends and family used to call her "Pussy Jones".
*Portrait of Wharton as a girl - Edward Harrison May *
After the end of the Civil war, her family started traveling across Europe.
During the travels which began 1866. she was educated by governesses and tutors and became fluent in German, French and Italian.
As they returned to the United States in 1872. she began reading books from her father's and his friends libraries, as she claimed she wanted more education then she received.
She was interested in poetry and fiction and started writing from an very early age, at the age of just eleven she attempted to write her first novel and four years later, at the age of fifteen, she made her first publication.
It was a translation of the German poem "What the Stones Tell" by Heinrich Karl Brugsch, earning her 50$.
Heinrich Karl Brugsch
In the same year, 1877, she wrote a 30,000 word novella called "Fast and Loose" and in 1878. her father arranged the private publication of more then twenty of her original poems and five of her translations.
Throughout she wasn't endorsed by her family nor friends, and she published most of her work anonymously.
In 1880. the literary magazine the Atlantic Monthly published five of her poems, but despite the success she stopped publishing her works until nine years later.
Even though she didn't publish anything in that period, she kept writing.
At the age of 23, in 1885. she married Edward Robbins Wharton, a man who like her, liked to travel.
They traveled together until 1902. when Edward started suffering of depression.
They spent the next years in The Mount, their house which she designed, until they got divorced in 1913.
The Mount
During the time of her marriage, she became a garden and interior designer, publishing several design books including "The Decoration of Houses in 1879.
She published her poem "The Last Giustiniani", in Schribner's Magaizne in 1889. and another designer book "Italian Villas and Their Gardens" in 1904.
After her divorce she moved to Paris where she decided to stay permanently.
AS the World War 1 begun, she became active in the work of charity and effort to help injured and the refugees and was awarded the Chavalier of the Legion Of Honour on April 18, 1916. by the French President himself!
Medal of the Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur
In the year 1916. she wrote the romantic novel "Summer", in 1918. the novella "The Marne", and in 1919. "A Son at the Front", the book "In Morocco" and in 1920. "The Age of Innocence" which was awarded the 1921. Pulitzer Prize for literature.
Edith Wharton died on August 11, 1937. from a stroke, at Le Pavillion Colombe, after having suffered a heart attack a few months earlier.
She was buried in the American Protestant section of the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles next to her friend, Walter Berry.
Thank you all for reading this short introduction of Edith Wharton, I hope it was time well spent and that everyone learned something!
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org
http://www.edithwharton.org
https://lareviewofbooks.org
http://www.nybooks.com
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