Edith Wharton (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Biography

Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862, into the wealthy “aristocracy” of the old New York society which would become the focus of much of her fiction. Her mother and father, George F. and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones, both traced their family lines back three hundred years; their ancestors were mentioned in Washington Irving's history of the Hudson River.

Wharton spent most of her childhood in Europe, where her family fled to avoid post-Civil War inflation. Returning to the United States in 1872, the Whartons followed the...

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