Born into a wealthy, aristocratic family, Edith Wharton grew up among the kind of people she wrote about in The Age of Innocence. After marrying, she divided her time between America and Europe, spending more and more of her time abroad. Her later years were spent in the company of fellow writers and she was recognized as the grande dame of American letters.
Born in New York City on January 24, 1862, Edith Newbold Jones was the daughter of George Frederic and Lucretia Rhinelander Jones. Her parents, descendants of Dutch and English colonists, were socially prominent with wealth from real estate, shipping, and banking. Edith's mother did not encourage her daughter's writing. Later, Edith saw her mother as cold and concerned with appearances; she saw her rarely in later life. Edith also had two much older brothers, Henry (b. 1850) and Frederic (b. 1846). Their lives were filled with servants, carriages, and social etiquette. From these happy childhood memories, the sensitive and intelligent Edith drew many ideas for her later writings about life among the leisure class.
Having suffered financial reverses, the family traveled through Spain, Italy, France, and Germany from 1866 to 1872 where the cost of living was lower. Edith learned German, Italian, and French before she was 10. In 1872, they returned to the United States, living on West 23rd Street in New York City with summers in Newport, Rhode Island. Edith was disappointed with America, finding New York City an ugly brown, and the architecture and interior decoration unsightly. She did not go to school but instead read from her father's extensive library and was taught by governesses. In 1878, Wharton wrote a book of poetry, Verses, that was printed privately. The editor of The Atlantic Monthly, William Dean Howells, put one of her poems in his magazine that same year. Her early writing was generally about the poor and their imagined harsh lives. By the time Edith made her social debut in 1879, she had written many early pieces. In 1880, the family went back to Europe and her father died at Cannes in 1882.
