Edith Wharton (Author)
Edith Wharton was born in New York City on January 24, 1862. Edith
married Teddy Wharton, who was 12 years older. They lived a life of
relative ease with homes in New York, Rhode Island, and
Massachusetts. Edith became a prolific writer and produced over 40
books in 40 years.
Edith divorced Teddy in 1912, having no immediate heirs, and never
married again. She was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for Fiction, an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University,
and a full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Her novels became so popular that Ms. Wharton was able to live
comfortably on her earnings the rest of her life. Edith continued
to write until a stroke took her life in August 1937.
America's greatest woman novelist—Sunday Times
I love virtually all of Edith Wharton, but this one's my
favourite... I admire her prose style, which is lucid, intelligent,
and artful rather than arty; she is eloquent but never fussy, and
always clear. She never seems to be writing well to show off. As
for The Age of Innocence, it's a poignant story that, typically for
Wharton, illustrates the bind women found themselves in when
trapped hazily between a demeaning if relaxing servitude and real
if frightening independence, and that both sexes find themselves in
when trapped between the demands of morality and the demands of the
heart. The novel is romantic but not sentimental, and I'm a sucker
for unhappy endings—
There is no woman in American literature as fascinating as the
doomed Madame Olenska. . . Traditionally, Henry James has always
been placed slightly higher up the slope of Parnassus than Edith
Wharton. But now that the prejudice against the female writer is on
the wane, they look to be exactly what they are: giants, equals,
the tutelary and benign gods of our American literature—
Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security and
alertness which characterizes Mrs. Wharton and her tradition?—
Wharton's dazzling skills as a stylist, creator of character,
ironical observer and unveiler of passionate, thwarted emotions
have earned her a devoted following—Sunday Times
No one has bettered Edith Wharton on the cash-sex nexus of the
respectable, as well as the clashes of propriety and fashion. The
Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth are probably the best
novels by this knowing, compassionate writer—Independent on
Sunday
Wharton evocatively records the high society of New York's gilded
age—Daily Mail
Wharton didn't simply reproduce the glossy surfaces of high society
but probed the hypocrisy, corruption, cynicism and coldheartedness
that lay just underneath—Independent
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