Edith Wharton (1862-1937) typifies the Grande Dame of American letters; everything about her, from her wealthy background to her stately demeanor suggests a woman in possession of herself. However, beneath the surface was a deep insecurity about her talent and abilities, one she gradually overcame. Her lack of confidence came from her upbringing; her mother and society friends thought that literary pursuits were beneath a person of her class. Wharton’s insecurity about  her talent and abilities was overcome at last by the accumulation of small successes, then larger ones.

She tiptoed into the publishing field by producing The Decoration of Houses and Italian Villas and Their Gardens before gathering enough courage to try her hand at poetry and short stories. She got her foot in the door quickly and was surprised at how well her work was received. In 1899, her first collection of stories, The Greater Inclination, was published. Her impressive and respected body of fiction and nonfiction, which included The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, The Custom of the Country, and others, was crowned with a Pulitzer Prize and other honors.   

Major Works

• The House of Mirth
• The Age of Innocence
• Ethan Frome
• The Custom of the Country
• The Valley of Decision
• The Reef

More Information

• Edith Wharton on Wikipedia
• The Edith Wharton Society

Visit Edith Wharton’s Home

• The Mount - Lenox, MA, USA

Edith Wharton Quotes

“After all, one knows one’s weak points so well, that it’s rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.”

“Every dawning talent has to go through a phase of imitation and subjection to influences, and the great object of the young writer should be not to fear those influences, but to seek only the greatest, and to assimilate them so they become [her] stock-in-trade.” (From a letter, 1918)

“The reception of my books gave me the self-confidence I had so long lacked, and in the company of people who shared my tastes, and treated me as their equal, I ceased to suffer from the agonizing shyness which used to rob such encounters of all pleasure.”

“There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.” (from The Last Asset, 1904)

“A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.”

“The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.” (from The House of Mirth, 1905)

“How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be ‘American’ before  … being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, and having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?”

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”

“Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue. True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.” (from The Writing of Fiction, 1925)

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” (from Vesalius in Zante, 1902)

“Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.” (from a journal entry, 1926)

“I don’t know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.”