Edith wharton author biography formation

  • 1A biography on the writer Edith Wharton, written for children, was published in 2010.
  • Wharton had a late start as a novelist, becoming a professional writer in her late 30s.
  • Edith Wharton, in her 1934 autobiography, “A Backward Glance,” made ironical sport of the fact that, as a child, she was forbidden to read.

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    Edith Wharton, in her 1934 autobiography, “A Backward Glance,” made ironical sport of the fact that, as a child, she was forbidden to read novels. By then in her seventies and the author of twenty-five works of fiction, she wrote that her mother, Lucretia Jones—a society hostess who, in Wharton’s telling, was indifferent to the life of the mind—decreed “that inom should never read a novel without asking her permission. . . . In beställning to spara further trouble she almost always refused to let me read it.”

    One novel that Wharton did read, however, was “Daniel Deronda,” by George Eliot. It is not recorded whether Lucretia sanctioned this tale, which centers on the ill-advised marriage between the sadistic Henleigh Grandcourt and the impoverished Gwendolen Harleth, and the unrequited love of Gwendolen for the intellectual, questing Daniel Deronda; but, one way or another, Wharton obtained a copy in September, 1876, the year of its publication, and delivered a witty critique of Eliot’s work.

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    1A biography on the writer Edith Wharton, written for children, was published in 2010. The publisher, Clarion Books, classifies it as “juvenile literature” in the sleeve text, and on the webpage as a “young adult biography”, its “reading level” stipulated to 9-12 years.1 Non fictive, it resembles a critical biography with its list of references accounting for quotations and illustrations, although its focus is on Wharton’s life and historical context, rather than her work.

    2My particular interest is how the author Edith Wharton (1862-1937) is introduced to an entirely new audience; she was never before a subject of a biography for children. Over the years many such as R.W.B. Lewis, Shari Benstock and Hermione Lee have written her biography. But most recently by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge, who is the author of the current biography for young readers, TheBrave Escape of Edith Wharton: A Biography (2010).2 This is particularly interesting since Wharton is known as a

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    Edith Wharton, by Edward Harrison May National Portrait Gallery NPG.82.136This coming fall, perhaps in September, I will be giving a library talk called "Edith Wharton: A Writing Life." In preparation, I have been immersing myself in Wharton's novels and stories. Although the fiction is often set in a New York as remote from us as an ancient city, among a wealthy and exclusive class many generations removed from today's social elite, what strikes me most powerfully is how modern it all seems. Her characters have passions, needs, joys, and frustrations which are as piercing and poignant as our own. They breathe the same air as we do.

    Edith Wharton has a secure position among the greatest writers America has ever produced. Even today, when the lustre of books has faded, and reading seems more and more a quaint throwback to an earlier time, people read Edith Wharton. You can still walk into most bookstores and find the novels that are generally thought of as her masterpieces, nov

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