There are writers I like to read, and writers I like to read about. There are writers I study to learn how they did what they did, and writers from whom I learn what not to do. There are also writers I’d love to meet, and writers I wouldn’t. Edith Wharton manages to fall outside most of these categories. I admire her short stories and simply loved her novella, Ethan Frome. I still haven’t managed to get through her novel, The Age of Innocence. I feel conflicted about her and always have. I’ve often wondered why that is.

She and I came from a similar background. Her family name was Jones and they were well-off, having made their money from real estate and connections to Chemical Bank, from which the expression “keeping up with the Joneses”, is supposed to have originated. The Joneses and others built large estates along the Hudson River. The Jones’ 24-room villa, Wyndcliffe, near Rhinebeck, spurred a large mansion building boom. The Astor mansion, Ferncliff, was not far away. In time, the Jones’ fortune was eclipsed by those of the Vanderbilts and the Astors. Strangely, all these goings-on had an indirect influence on me personally. It was the extraordinary grandeur of these building projects that the press objected to, and to which my grandmother acquiesced, by reducing the design of the house I visited during vacations to one of a more moderate size. Moderate it may have been at the time, but it was impressive to me and it is the house I’ve written about as “Rhinebeck” in my novels. Its moods, depending on the weather, ranged from quiet magnificence to a sullen moodiness. Such images and emotions, even from a material object, influenced me greatly over the years.

Born in 1862, Edith Wharton was precocious and wrote poetry from an early age, some of which was published anonymously. She published her first novel under her own name at the age of forty, late in a writer’s life. Still, she managed to write fifteen novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories during her life, an impressive achievement. Ray Bradbury sang her praises as a writer of short fiction. I followed his advice and read many of her stories. I had to agree. She had an extraordinary gift. It was said that her mother forbade her from reading novels. As a result, she read everything else from Darwin to Nietzsche until she was married, all of which influenced her style.

Her efforts were well received by the public, and in 1921, she was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize but not without some controversy. The prize board had originally given the prize to Sinclair Lewis, but that recommendation was overturned, and the prize awarded to Wharton’s The Age of Innocence instead. She was also nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1927, 1928, and 1930.

In 1911, she moved to France after her marriage to Edward Wharton deteriorated, and she remained there for most of her life. During WWI, she was a tireless supporter of unemployed women. She died in France in 1937 at the age of 75.

One of my favorite quotes of hers: “The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”

Lastly; “When people ask for time, it’s always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn’t take half as long to say.”

I must admit she has had a profound influence on how I write, and what I write about. She was gifted in most everything she did.