Edith Wharton was born on January 24, 1862 and died on August 11, 1937. Wharton was born to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander in New York City. She had two brothers. The saying "Keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to her father's family. She was also related to the Rensselaer family, the most prestigious of the old patroon families. In 1885, at 23, she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years older. From the late 1880s until 1902, he suffered acute depression. In 1908 her husband's mental state was determined to be incurable. She divorced him in
1913. Around the same time, Edith was overcome with the harsh criticisms leveled by the naturalist writers. Later in 1908 she began an affair with Morton Fullerton, a journalist for The Times, in whom she found an intellectual partner.
Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was even nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930.
In addition to novels, Wharton wrote at least 85 short stories. She was also
a garden designer, interior designer, and taste-maker of her time. She wrote several design books, including her first published work, The Decoration of Houses of 1897, co-authored by Ogden Codman. Another is the generously illustrated Italian Villas and Their Gardens of 1904.