Edith Wharton’s Birthday

Stacey’s copies of The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, and Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton.

Edith Wharton, American novelist and short story writer, was born on January 24, 1862.

She was born into a wealthy family and into a time that discouraged women from aspiring to more than marriage. She leveraged her privilege, challenged the gender boundaries of her time, travelled extensively, wrote over 40 books, and was the first woman to be awarded with the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Age of Innocence.

She was a fascinating person, not without problems, and you can learn more about her on the website for The Mount, a cultural centre based at Edith Wharton’s historic home. If I find myself in Massachusetts someday, this place is number one on my list of must-see places.

I found this essay regarding her privilege and writing from the New Yorker in 2012 to be very illuminating. It’s long but a worthwhile read that examines Edith Wharton in terms of her class privilege and in terms of her personal lack of beauty and how she approached beauty within her writing.

And if you really want to go down the rabbit hole of book appreciation, you can check out this digitized library of the 2,700 books contained in Edith Wharton's library at The Mount.

– Stacey