The Custom of the Country

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937), née Newbold Jones, American novelist and short story writer, born in New York of a distinguished and wealthy family. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. She married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885 and they settled in France in 1907. They were divorced in 1913. She devoted her energy to a cosmopolitan social life, which included friendship with H. James, and to a literary career, which began with the publication of poems and stories in “Scribner´s Magazine”. Her first volume of short stories, “The Greater Inclination” (1899), was followed by a novella, “The Touchstone” (1900), but it was “The House of Mirth” (1905), the tragedy of failed social climber Lily Bart, which established her as a leading novelist. Edith Wharton´s chief preoccupation is with the conflict between social and individual fulfilment which frequently leads to tragedy.