Edith Wharton is one of my bucket list authors; I am going to read everything she wrote. Her command of the language is astounding, and her understanding of human behavior, especially the secret inner life of jealous, bitter, or frightened individuals, is breathtaking. I have actually gasped at certain reveals. She understood what a person who feels trapped by their situation might do in desperation. The banality of cruelity. I am thinking of Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence in particular.
And yes, she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, in 1921, for The Age of Innocence. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928, and 1930. She won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction in 1924. Yet, she did not publish her first novel until she was forty years old.
I can absolutely recommend the most recent movie version of The Age of Innocence (1993); Winona Ryder, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Michelle Pfeiffer completely understood Wharton’s intentions. Plus, it was gorgeously costumed and staged. I just got lost in it, and they nailed the shocking reveal.
Her full name is Edith Newbold Jones Wharton; the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” is said to originate with reference to her father’s extremely wealthy family.
All of her books are in the common domain and are available as ebooks for free from the Gutenberg Project and as lovely paperbacks, mostly from Penguin. Here’s the list of the ones I have read so far:
The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton—yes, horror, too! (paperback from Bookshop)
And all this fabulous insight and language came from someone whose mother forbade her from reading novels until she got married!
She is the closest to romance that I ever get as a reader, in general:
And, as I said, she understood the human inner life brilliantly:
I would have loved to have attended a salon with her, or simply have tea:
And she can be quite funny, as well:
She has not been inducted into the Penguin Cloth Classics series yet which surprised me.
Is that an evil eye bracelet?
I think I read Roman Fever in early college. Wharton was such a punk! Her irreverent tone and keen observations stuck with me over the years. She's a legend.