Edith Wharton

The Bunner Sisters Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 - August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. Wharton combined an insider's view of American aristocracy with a powerful prose style. Her novels and short stories realistically portrayed the lives and morals of the late nineteenth century, an era of decline and faded wealth. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921, the first woman to receive this honor. Wharton was acquainted with many of the well-known people of her day, both in America and in Europe, including President Theodore Roosevelt. Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City. She had two older brothers, Frederic Rhinelander, who was sixteen, and Henry Edward, who was eleven. She was baptized April 20, 1862, Easter Sunday, at Grace Church.[2] To her friends and family she was known as "Pussy Jones."[3] The saying "keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to her father's family.[4] She was also related to the Rensselaers, the most prestigious of the old patroon families, who had received land grants from the former Dutch government of New York and New Jersey. She had a lifelong friendship with her niece, the landscape architect Beatrix Farrand of Reef Point in Bar Harbor, Maine.