Edith Wharton (born Edith Newbold Jones) was born on January 24, 1862, to a wealthy and wellconnected New York family. After the Civil War ended, however, Wharton's parents were hit hard by inflation. To save money the family lived and traveled throughout Europe until Wharton was about ten years old, by which time she spoke five languages. After the family returned to the United States, Wharton embarked on a program of selfeducation, primarily fostered by her extensive reading. Just before her fifteenth birthday, Wharton finished her first creative work, a novella entitled Fast and Loose, which did not see publication until 1977. She also had a poem published in the Atlantic Monthly and two published in the New York World before her eighteenth birthday.

After her first engagement was broken, Wharton married Theodore Wharton in 1885. Soon thereafter she began to write stories, which she sold to popular magazines. Her...