A red plaque identifies the childhood residence and the accomplishments of author Edith Wharton. Edith wrote her first novel,
Fast and Loose, and poems,
Poetry Verses while living here. The plaque is inscribed:
Edith Wharton
1862 - 1937
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14 West 23rd Street
Manhattan
This was the childhood home of Edith Jones Wharton, one of
America's most important authors, at a time when 23rd Street marked
the northern boundary of fashionable New York. Here, in her father's
extensive library, young Edith Jones discovered the world of literature.
Wharton wrote with authority on gardens and design, but was most
celebrated for her fiction. her novels and stories characterized by
her intelligence, perception and great beauty of her prose.
She revealed the life of the soul with courage and clarity.
Wharton lived in France for the latter part of her life, but the
complex world of patrician New York remained the source of her
greatest fiction. This includes The House of Mirth (1905) and The
Age of Innocence, for which, in 1921, she became the
first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.
The Historic Landmarks
Preservation Center
October 5, 2011
PLAQUE PROGRAM CONCEIVED BY BARBARALEE DIAMONSTEIN SPIELVOGEL
Edith Wharton was born on January 24, 1862 to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander in New York City. In 1885 she married Edward Robbins Wharton. In 1902, she built The Mount, an estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, which expresses her principles of garden and interior design.
She was a writer of books on design, novels, short stories and poetry. The following is a listing of her works from Wikipedia (q.v.)
Novels:
The Touchstone, 1900
The Valley of Decision, 1902
Sanctuary, 1903
The House of Mirth, 1905
Madame de Treymes, 1907
The Fruit of the Tree, 1907
Ethan Frome, 1911
The Reef, 1912
The Custom of the Country, 1913
Summer, 1917
The Marne, 1918
The Age of Innocence, 1920 (Pulitzer Prize winner)
The Glimpses of the Moon, 1922
A Son at the Front, 1923
Old New York, 1924
The Spark (The 'Sixties), 1924
The Mother's Recompense, 1925
Twilight Sleep, 1927
The Children, 1928
Hudson River Bracketed, 1929
The Gods Arrive, 1932
The Buccaneers, 1938
Fast and Loose, 1938 (first novel, written in 1876–1877)
Poetry:
Poetry Verses, 1878
Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse, 1909
Twelve Poems, 1926
Short story collections:
The Greater Inclination, 1899
Souls Belated, 1899
Crucial Instances, 1901
The Reckoning, 1902
The Descent of Man and Other Stories, 1903
The Other Two, 1904
The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories, 1908
Tales of Men and Ghosts, 1910
Xingu and Other Stories, 1916
Old New York, 1924
Here and Beyond, 1926
Certain People, 1930
Human Nature, 1933
The World Over, 1936
Ghosts, 1937
Roman Fever, 1934
"The Angel at the Grave"
Non-fiction:
The Decoration of Houses, 1897
Italian Villas and Their Gardens, 1904
Italian Backgrounds, 1905
A Motor-Flight Through France, 1908 (travel)
France, from Dunkerque to Belfort, 1915 (war)
French Ways and Their Meaning, 1919
In Morocco, 1920 (travel)
The Writing of Fiction, 1925 (essays on writing)
A Backward Glance, 1934 (autobiography)
As editor The Book of the Homeless, 1916
Edith Wharton died of a stroke on August 11, 1937 in Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt (now rue Edith Wharton). She is interred in the American Cemetery in Versailles, France.