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Top 10 Amazing Facts about Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was an American novelist, short story writer, and interior designer. She was born to a family of two brothers in New York. While her family lived in New York, summers were spent in the summer home in Newport, Rhode Island until Edith was 4. They then moved to Europe. Around the same age, Edith invented a game she called 鈥渕aking up鈥�. She walked around with a book, turned its pages, and made up a story about someone she had seen on the street.

When she was 10 years old, her family moved back to New York. She was then taught  the social rules she was expected to follow. Appearances were very important, and Edith learned early how houses, clothing, and manners define a society and a family. She was forbidden from reading contemporary novels because her mom thought they were inappropriate for an unmarried girl. She found solace in her father鈥檚 personal library. By her teens she knew the 700-800 books there by heart. Here are the Top 10 Amazing Facts about Edith Wharton.

1. She contacted typhoid at 9 years of age

Photo by Edward Harrison May. .

When Edith was 9, she contracted typhoid fever. It was so bad that she almost died. The experience left her with unresolved fears. Long afterwards, she needed her light on and a maid with her in order to fall asleep.

She also pointed her slippers in the same direction every night to keep ghosts away. As an adult, she wrote many ghost stories as a way of processing the isolation and fear she felt. Some of her best have been collected in The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. Edith often said she didn鈥檛 believe in ghosts, but was scared of them anyway.

2. She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize

Edith Wharton didn鈥檛 expect her novel, The Age of Innocence, to win the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The Prize was founded by Joseph Pulitzer, who created an endowment in his will for annual literary awards. One of the awards is the 鈥淎merican novel published during the year which shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life and the highest standards of American manners and manhood.鈥�

The Age of Innocence was set in the 1870s New York high society of Edith’s childhood. In this age, descendants of families who had established fortunes as bankers, merchants, or lawyers lived lives of leisure. This community enforced its rituals and manners ruthlessly. Members were constantly on high alert for signs of 鈥渋ll breeding鈥�.

3. Edith designed her own house

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Not only did she design her house, she also wrote a book about home design called The Decoration of Houses in 1897. Edith had always been intrigued by how home d茅cor and clothing defined people and societies. To her the heavy curtains mirrored the veils women wore outside to preserve their complexions.

These gentle observations became her first public critiques of New York society rituals. The book inspired Edith to create a home and garden she loved.  In 1901, she and Teddy purchased 100 acres of land in the Berkshire area of Massachusetts. Edith had fallen in love with English manor houses and European gardens during her travels. She named her home The Mount.

4. Marriage inspired some of her works

Immediately after she was married, Edith felt trapped. Her struggle to reconcile her inner desire to be an author with her outer fa莽ade as a society wife led to a variety of health problems. She made a conscious decision to permit herself to write.

Thereby, Edith published some new poetry and wrote several short stories about people trapped by marriage or circumstance in lives they didn鈥檛 want. She  discovered an audience hungry for her honest portrayal of human nature. She collected her favorite literature to be published together in book form. The success of The Great Inclination made her really proud.

5. Edith’s being an author did not sit well with her husband

Photo by Yale University Library. .

Her new identity as an author put a strain on her marriage. Teddy was more comfortable with their old society and didn鈥檛 like her new literary friends. He could not match Edith intellectually. As Edith was writing Ethan Fromme (1911), another story about being trapped in an unhappy relationship, she decided to unshackle herself.

She made arrangements to sell The Mount and start divorce proceedings. While most of her characters faced social pressure too difficult to resist, Edith was reconciled to leave that life behind. She decided to build a career for herself as a writer. The two had been married for 28 years.

6. Edith set up organizations in France to help those caught up in World War I

Edith was traveling in Europe when World War I began. She stayed in France for its duration and became very involved in the French war effort. She founded two organizations to help civilians caught up in the destruction,  the Children of Flanders and the American Hostel for Refugees.

She also published articles encouraging the United States to enter the war on the Allied side. She then raised funds through the sale of The Book of the Homeless (1916), an anthology of war essays and stories by well-known authors. Shewas awarded the French Legion of Honor for her works.

7. She actively broke the glass ceiling for women

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In 1923, Edith became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University. Edith bequeathed her personal papers to Yale. This was on the condition that some of them be kept private until 1968. In 1930, she also became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1930.

8. Edith always struggled with societal expectations

The tension between the expectation of conformity and the desire for a meaningful life became a recurring theme in Edith鈥檚 work. This is because she related with this experience personally.

She struggled until she finally acquired a personality of her own. This happened in 1899, when she published her first volume of short stories, The Great Inclination. Seeing her stories published convinced Edith that she was worthy of being called an author.

9. Bad reviews fueled Edith’s passion

Photo by Edward Harrison May.

Edith’s confidence as a writer was strengthened by a bad review of The Great Inclination. The critic declared that Edith wasn鈥檛 a skilled writer because all short stories must start with dialogue.

Edith’s stories did not start with dialogues. She did not confirm to the idea that every story in the world must follow the same fixed formula. For her writing was a personal work of art. She vowed to 鈥渘ever to let my inward conviction as to the rightness of anything I had done be affected by outside opinion鈥�.

10. France became her primary residence later on

Photo by Mu. .

After the war, Edith decided to make France her primary residence. She bought two homes in France. When she wasn鈥檛 writing she could be found working in her gardens or hosting salons where the literary community could gather.

She returned to the United States frequently to avoid losing her American citizenship. Edith died on August 11, 1937 at 75 years old. She is buried, in the Cimeti猫re des Gonards in 麻豆APP.