113-542: Edith Newbold Wharton ( / ˈ hw ɔːr t ən / ; née Jones ; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray, realistically, the lives and morals of the Gilded Age . In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, The Age of Innocence . She
226-442: A woman's surname at birth that has been replaced or changed. In most English-speaking cultures, it is specifically applied to a woman's maiden name after her surname has changed due to marriage. The term né can be used to denote a man's surname at birth that has subsequently been replaced or changed. The diacritic mark (the acute accent ) over the e is considered significant to its spelling, and ultimately its meaning, but
339-487: A community based on Utopian ideals inspired in part by Transcendentalism. The farm would run based on a communal effort, using no animals for labor; its participants would eat no meat and use no wool or leather. Emerson said he felt "sad at heart" for not engaging in the experiment himself. Even so, he did not feel Fruitlands would be a success. "Their whole doctrine is spiritual", he wrote, "but they always end with saying, Give us much land and money". Even Alcott admitted he
452-788: A different work from the 1836 essay of the same name. Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and much of the rest of the country. He had begun lecturing in 1833; by the 1850s he was giving as many as 80 lectures per year. He addressed the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and the Gloucester Lyceum , among others. Emerson spoke on a wide variety of subjects, and many of his essays grew out of his lectures. He charged between $ 10 and $ 50 for each appearance, bringing him as much as $ 2,000 in
565-580: A former U.S. Open Tennis Championship runner-up who became governor of Rhode Island. At the time, Wharton described the main house as "incurably ugly.” Wharton agreed to pay $ 80,000 for the property, and she spent thousands more to alter the home's facade, decorate the interior, and landscape the grounds. In 1902, Wharton designed The Mount , her estate in Lenox, Massachusetts , which survives, today, as an example of her design principles. She wrote several of her novels there, including The House of Mirth (1905),
678-491: A further $ 11,674.49 in July 1837 (equivalent to $ 314,374 in 2023). In 1834, he considered that he had an income of $ 1,200 a year from the initial payment of the estate, equivalent to what he had earned as a pastor. On September 8, 1836, the day before the publication of Nature , Emerson met with Frederic Henry Hedge , George Putnam , and George Ripley to plan periodic gatherings of other like-minded intellectuals. This
791-407: A journal entry dated March 29, 1832, he wrote, "I visited Ellen's tomb & opened the coffin." Boston's Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior pastor, and he was ordained on January 11, 1829. His initial salary was $ 1,200 per year (equivalent to $ 34,335 in 2023 ), increasing to $ 1,400 in July, but with his church role he took on other responsibilities: he was the chaplain of
904-530: A journal of his day-to-day detailed description of adventures in the wilderness with his fellow members of the Saturday Club. This two-week camping excursion (1858 in the Adirondacks) brought him face to face with a true wilderness, something he spoke of in his essay " Nature ", published in 1836. He said, "in the wilderness I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages". Emerson
1017-537: A letter of recommendation to meet Thomas Carlyle . He went to Switzerland and had to be dragged by fellow passengers to visit Voltaire 's home in Ferney, "protesting all the way upon the unworthiness of his memory". He then went on to Paris, a "loud modern New York of a place", where he visited the Jardin des Plantes . He was greatly moved by the organization of plants according to Jussieu 's system of classification, and
1130-593: A letter to Lydia Jackson proposing marriage. Her acceptance reached him by mail on the 28th. In July 1835, he bought a house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts, which he named Bush; it is now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House . Emerson quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He gave a lecture to commemorate the 200th anniversary of
1243-550: A lifelong inspiration for Thoreau. Emerson's own journal was published in 16 large volumes, in the definitive Harvard University Press edition issued between 1960 and 1982. Some scholars consider the journal to be Emerson's key literary work. In March 1837, Emerson gave a series of lectures on the philosophy of history at the Masonic Temple in Boston. This was the first time he managed a lecture series on his own, and it
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#17327810645591356-540: A list of books he had read and started a journal in a series of notebooks that would be called "Wide World". He took outside jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as an occasional teacher working with his uncle Samuel and aunt Sarah Ripley in Waltham, Massachusetts . By his senior year, Emerson decided to go by his middle name, Waldo. Emerson served as Class Poet; as
1469-459: A memoir. In 1873, Wharton wrote a short story and gave it to her mother to read. Stinging from her mother's critique, Wharton decided to write only poetry . While she constantly sought her mother's approval and love, she rarely received either, and their relationship was a troubled one. Before she was 15, Wharton wrote Fast and Loose (1877). In her youth, she wrote about society. Her central themes came from her experiences with her parents. She
1582-642: A mental collapse as well; he was taken to McLean Asylum in June 1828 at age 25. Although he recovered his mental equilibrium, he died in 1834, apparently from long-standing tuberculosis . Another of Emerson's bright and promising younger brothers, Charles, born in 1808, died in 1836, also of tuberculosis, making him the third young person in Emerson's innermost circle to die in a period of a few years. Emerson met his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, in Concord, New Hampshire, on Christmas Day, 1827, and married her when she
1695-607: A neighboring pine grove. He wrote that he was "landlord and water lord of 14 acres, more or less". Emerson was introduced to Indian philosophy through the works of the French philosopher Victor Cousin . In 1845, Emerson's journals show he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke 's Essays on the Vedas . He was strongly influenced by Vedanta , and much of his writing has strong shades of nondualism . One of
1808-639: A number of speeches and lectures, and welcomed John Brown to his home during Brown's visits to Concord. He voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 , but was disappointed that Lincoln was more concerned about preserving the Union than eliminating slavery outright. Once the American Civil War broke out, Emerson made it clear that he believed in immediate emancipation of the slaves. Around this time, in 1860, Emerson published The Conduct of Life , his seventh collection of essays. It "grappled with some of
1921-399: A passion for Walt Whitman . Source: Campbell, Donna M. "Works by Edith Wharton" . Washington State University . Retrieved January 22, 2018 . Source: ( Marshall 1996 , pp. 21–25) Olsen, Eric B. (2019) "Ethan Frome" Analysis In Context Birth name#Maiden and married names A birth name is the name given to a person upon birth. The term may be applied to
2034-409: A person's name include middle names , diminutive forms, changes relating to parental status (due to one's parents' divorce or adoption by different parents), and gender transition . The French and English-adopted née is the feminine past participle of naître , which means "to be born". Né is the masculine form. The term née , having feminine grammatical gender , can be used to denote
2147-733: A poem under a pseudonym in the New York World, in 1879. In 1880, she had five poems published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly , an important literary magazine. Despite these early successes, she was not encouraged by her family or her social circle, and though she continued to write, she did not publish anything more until her poem "The Last Giustiniani" was published in Scribner's Magazine in October 1889. Between 1880 and 1890, Wharton put her writing aside to participate in
2260-472: A prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity . Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans," and Walt Whitman called Emerson his "master". Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, " Nature ". Following this work, he gave
2373-413: A seventh-generation descendant of Mayflower voyagers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley through their daughter Hope. Emerson's father died from stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than two weeks before Emerson's eighth birthday. Emerson was raised by his mother, with the help of the other women in the family; his aunt Mary Moody Emerson in particular had a profound effect on him. She lived with
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#17327810645592486-415: A society woman of her time. Consequently, the poem was published under the name of a friend's father, E. A. Washburn, a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson , who supported women's education. In 1877, at the age of 15, she secretly wrote a novella , Fast and Loose . In 1878, her father arranged for a collection of two dozen original poems and five translations, Verses, to be privately published. Wharton published
2599-415: A speech entitled " The American Scholar ," in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence". Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures, first, and then, revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include
2712-414: A typical winter lecture season. This was more than his earnings from other sources. In some years, he earned as much as $ 900 for a series of six lectures, and in another, for a winter series of talks in Boston, he netted $ 1,600. He eventually gave some 1,500 lectures in his lifetime. His earnings allowed him to expand his property, buying 11 acres (4.5 ha) of land by Walden Pond and a few more acres in
2825-519: Is now called Schoolmaster Hill in Boston's Franklin Park . In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson went to seek a warmer climate. He first went to Charleston, South Carolina , but found the weather was still too cold. He then went farther south to St. Augustine, Florida , where he took long walks on the beach and began writing poetry. While in St. Augustine he made the acquaintance of Prince Achille Murat ,
2938-417: Is sometimes omitted. According to Oxford University 's Dictionary of Modern English Usage , the terms are typically placed after the current surname (e.g., " Margaret Thatcher , née Roberts" or " Bill Clinton , né Blythe"). Since they are terms adopted into English (from French), they do not have to be italicized , but they often are. In Polish tradition , the term z domu (literally meaning "of
3051-585: Is true dying"), and the essay "Experience". In the same month, William James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather . Bronson Alcott announced his plans in November 1842 to find "a farm of a hundred acres in excellent condition with good buildings, a good orchard and grounds". Charles Lane purchased a 90-acre (36 ha) farm in Harvard, Massachusetts, in May 1843 for what would become Fruitlands ,
3164-456: Is what it does not tell: her criticism of Lucretia Jones [her mother], her difficulties with Teddy, and her affair with Morton Fullerton, which did not come to light until her papers, deposited in Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library , were opened in 1968. On June 1, 1937, Wharton was at her French country home (shared with architect and interior decorator Ogden Codman ), where she
3277-579: The Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York with nine others: Louis Agassiz , James Russell Lowell , John Holmes, Horatio Woodman , Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar , Jeffries Wyman , Estes Howe , Amos Binney , and William James Stillman . Invited, but unable to make the trip, were Oliver Wendell Holmes , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , and Charles Eliot Norton , all members of the Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts) . This social club
3390-644: The Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles, "with all the honors owed a war hero and a chevalier of the Legion of Honor ... a group of some one hundred friends sang a verse of the hymn 'O Paradise'..." Despite not publishing her first novel until she was forty, Wharton became an extraordinarily productive writer. In addition to her 15 novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories, she published poetry, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, and
3503-558: The Fugitive Slave Act : The act of Congress is a law which every one of you will break on the earliest occasion—a law which no man can obey, or abet the obeying, without loss of self-respect and forfeiture of the name of gentleman. That summer, he wrote in his diary: This filthy enactment was made in the nineteenth century by people who could read and write. I will not obey it. In February 1852 Emerson, James Freeman Clarke , and William Henry Channing edited an edition of
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3616-668: The Germans invaded Belgium in the fall of 1914 and Paris was flooded with Belgian refugees, she helped to set up the American Hostels for Refugees, which managed to get them shelter, meals, and clothes, and eventually created an employment agency to help them find work. She collected more than $ 100,000 on their behalf. In early 1915, she organized the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, which gave shelter to nearly 900 Belgian refugees who had fled, when their homes were bombed by
3729-552: The Massachusetts Legislature and a member of the Boston School Committee . His church activities kept him busy, though during this period, and facing the imminent death of his wife, he began to doubt his own beliefs. After his wife's death, he began to disagree with the church's methods, writing in his journal in June 1832, "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it
3842-487: The naturalist school of writers. In addition to novels, Wharton wrote at least 85 short stories. She was also a garden designer , an interior designer , and a taste-maker of her time. She wrote several design books, including her first major published work, The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored by Ogden Codman . Another of her "home and garden" books is the generously illustrated Italian Villas and Their Gardens of 1904, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish . Over
3955-536: The surname , the given name , or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth register may by that fact alone become the person's legal name . The assumption in the Western world is often that the name from birth (or perhaps from baptism or brit milah ) will persist to adulthood in the normal course of affairs—either throughout life or until marriage. Some reasons for changes of
4068-622: The Bible Society while a slave auction was taking place in the yard outside. He wrote, "One ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with 'Going, gentlemen, going! ' " After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother William in a school for young women established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts ; when his brother William went to Göttingen to study law in mid-1824, Ralph Waldo closed
4181-646: The British Isles. He also visited Paris between the French Revolution of 1848 and the bloody June Days . When he arrived, he saw the stumps of trees that had been cut down to form barricades in the February riots. On May 21, he stood on the Champ de Mars in the midst of mass celebrations for concord, peace and labor. He wrote in his journal, "At the end of the year we shall take account, & see if
4294-478: The French administration, Lyautey, and particularly, his wife. During the post-war years, she divided her time between Hyères and Provence , where she finished The Age of Innocence , in 1920. She returned to the United States only once, after the war, to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1923. The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton
4407-826: The Germans. Aided by her influential connections in the French government, she and her long-time friend, Walter Berry (then president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris), were among the few foreigners in France allowed to travel to the front lines, during World War I. She and Berry made five journeys, between February and August 1915, which Wharton described in a series of articles that were first published in Scribner's Magazine and later as Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort , which became an American bestseller. Travelling by car, Wharton and Berry drove through
4520-622: The Jones family in Europe during this time. After returning to the United States with her mother, Wharton continued her courtship with Stevens, announcing their engagement in August 1882. The month the two were to marry, the engagement ended. Wharton's mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones, moved back to Paris in 1883, and she lived there until her death in 1901. On April 29, 1885, at the age of 23, Wharton married Edward Robbins (Teddy) Wharton, who
4633-540: The Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge"; it was renamed for a collection of essays (which included the first general publication of "Nature") in 1849. Friends urged him to publish the talk, and he did so at his own expense, in an edition of 500 copies, which sold out in a month. In the speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States and urged Americans to create a writing style all their own, free from Europe. James Russell Lowell , who
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4746-587: The Revolution was worth the trees." The trip left an important imprint on Emerson's later work. His 1856 book English Traits is based largely on observations recorded in his travel journals and notebooks. Emerson later came to see the American Civil War as a "revolution" that shared common ground with the European revolutions of 1848. In a speech in Concord, Massachusetts , on May 3, 1851, Emerson denounced
4859-669: The Whartons and their friend, James Van Alen, took a cruise through the Aegean islands . Wharton was 26. The trip cost the Whartons $ 10,000 and lasted four months. She kept a travel journal, during this trip, that was thought to be lost but was later published as The Cruise of the Vanadis , now considered her earliest known travel writing. In 1897, Edith Wharton purchased Land's End in Newport, Rhode Island, from Robert Livingston Beeckman ,
4972-447: The act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul. The central message Emerson drew from his Asian studies was that "the purpose of life was spiritual transformation and direct experience of divine power, here and now on earth." In 1847–48, he toured
5085-463: The age of 11. Her mother's criticism quashed her ambition, however, and she turned to poetry. She was 15 years old when her first published work appeared, a translation of a German poem "Was die Steine Erzählen" ("What the Stones Tell") by Heinrich Karl Brugsch , for which she was paid $ 50. Her family did not want her name to appear in print, since writing was not considered a proper occupation for
5198-436: The business arrangements, lined up contributors, and translated the French entries into English. Theodore Roosevelt wrote a two-page introduction, in which he praised Wharton's effort and urged Americans to support the war. She also kept up her own work, continuing to write novels, short stories, and poems, as well as reporting for The New York Times and keeping up her enormous correspondence. Wharton urged Americans to support
5311-433: The clearest examples of this can be found in his essay " The Over-soul ": We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but
5424-600: The course of her life, she crossed the Atlantic 60 times. In Europe, her primary destinations were Italy, France, and England. She also went to Morocco. She wrote many books about her travels, including Italian Backgrounds and A Motor-Flight through France . Her husband, Edward Wharton, shared her love of travel and for many years, they spent at least four months of each year abroad, mainly in Italy. Their friend, Egerton Winthrop, accompanied them, on many journeys there. In 1888,
5537-638: The decent black of the pastor, he was free to choose the gown of the lecturer and teacher, of the thinker not confined within the limits of an institution or a tradition." Emerson toured Europe in 1833 and later wrote of his travels in English Traits (1856). He left aboard the brig Jasper on Christmas Day, 1832, sailing first to Malta . During his European trip, he spent several months in Italy, visiting Rome, Florence and Venice, among other cities. When in Rome, he met with John Stuart Mill , who gave him
5650-494: The displaced. She was a "heroic worker on behalf of her adopted country". On April 18, 1916, Raymond Poincaré , the then-President of France, appointed her Chevalier of the Legion of Honour , the country's highest award, in recognition of her dedication to the war effort. Her relief work included setting up workrooms for unemployed French women, organizing concerts to provide work for musicians, raising tens of thousands of dollars for
5763-580: The editors of her letters as "one of the better known failed encounters in the American literary annals.” She spoke fluent French, Italian, and German, and many of her books were published in both French and English. In 1934, Wharton's autobiography , A Backward Glance, was published. In the view of Judith E. Funston, writing on Edith Wharton in American National Biography , What is most notable about A Backward Glance, however,
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#17327810645595876-466: The establishment and the general Protestant community. He was denounced as an atheist and a poisoner of young men's minds. Despite the roar of critics, he made no reply, leaving others to put forward a defense. He was not invited back to speak at Harvard for another thirty years. The Transcendental group began to publish its flagship journal, The Dial , in July 1840. They planned the journal as early as October 1839, but did not begin work on it until
5989-513: The family off and on and maintained a constant correspondence with Emerson until her death in 1863. Emerson's formal schooling began at the Boston Latin School in 1812, when he was nine. In October 1817, at age 14, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed freshman messenger for the president, requiring Emerson to fetch delinquent students and send messages to faculty. Midway through his junior year, Emerson began keeping
6102-491: The famous essay "Self-Reliance". His aunt called it a "strange medley of atheism and false independence", but it gained favorable reviews in London and Paris. This book, and its popular reception, more than any of Emerson's contributions to date laid the groundwork for his international fame. In January 1842 Emerson's first son, Waldo, died of scarlet fever . Emerson wrote of his grief in the poem " Threnody " ("For this losing
6215-486: The first edition of Leaves of Grass stir up significant interest and convinced Whitman to issue a second edition shortly thereafter. This edition quoted a phrase from Emerson's letter, printed in gold leaf on the cover: "I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career". Emerson took offense that this letter was made public and later was more critical of the work. In summer 1858, Emerson camped at Follensbee Pond in
6328-414: The first of many chronicles of life in old New York. At The Mount, she entertained the cream of American literary society, including her close friend, novelist Henry James , who described the estate as "a delicate French chateau mirrored in a Massachusetts pond". Although she spent many months traveling in Europe nearly every year, with her friend, Egerton Winthrop (a descendant of John Winthrop ), The Mount
6441-430: The first week of 1840. Unitarian minister George Ripley was the managing editor. Margaret Fuller was the first editor, having been approached by Emerson after several others had declined the role. Fuller stayed on for about two years, when Emerson took over, using the journal to promote talented young writers including Ellery Channing and Thoreau. In 1841 Emerson published Essays , his second book, which included
6554-550: The first woman to win the award. The three fiction judges – literary critic Stuart Pratt Sherman , literature professor Robert Morss Lovett , and novelist Hamlin Garland – voted to give the prize to Sinclair Lewis for his satire Main Street , but Columbia University's advisory board, led by conservative university president Nicholas Murray Butler , overturned their decision and awarded the prize to The Age of Innocence . Wharton
6667-527: The former Dutch government of New York and New Jersey. Her father's first cousin was Caroline Schermerhorn Astor . Fort Stevens, in New York, was named for Wharton's maternal great-grandfather, Ebenezer Stevens , a Revolutionary War hero and general. Wharton was born during the Civil War . However, in describing her family life, Wharton does not mention the war, except that their travels to Europe after
6780-733: The help of designer Ogden Codman . In 1897, the Whartons purchased their New York home, 884 Park Avenue . Between 1886 and 1897, they traveled overseas, in the period from February to June, mostly visiting Italy but also Paris and England. From her marriage onwards, three interests came to dominate Wharton's life: American houses, writing, and Italy. From the late 1880s until 1902, Teddy Wharton suffered from chronic depression. The couple, then, ceased their extensive travel. At that time, his depression became more debilitating, after which they lived almost exclusively at their estate, The Mount , in Lenox, Massachusetts. During those same years, Wharton, herself,
6893-574: The house", de domo in Latin ) may be used, with rare exceptions, meaning the same as née . Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist , and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as
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#17327810645597006-454: The ideas he would later develop in his first published essay, "Nature": Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book that is written in that tongue. On January 24, 1835, Emerson wrote
7119-462: The members of the Saturday Club, raising their interest in this unknown region. James Russell Lowell and William Stillman led the effort to organize a trip to the Adirondacks. They began their journey on August 2, 1858, traveling by train, steamboat, stagecoach , and canoe guide boats. News that these cultured men were living like "Sacs and Sioux" in the wilderness appeared in newspapers across
7232-939: The morality of the author, critiques of intellectual pretension, and the "unmasking" of the truth. Wharton's writing also explored themes of "social mores and social reform" as they relate to the "extremes and anxieties of the Gilded Age". A key recurring theme in Wharton's writing is the relationship between the house as a physical space and its relationship to its inhabitant's characteristics and emotions. Maureen Howard argues "Edith Wharton conceived of houses, dwelling places, in extended imagery of shelter and dispossession. Houses – their confinement and their theatrical possibilities ... they are never mere settings." American children's stories containing slang were forbidden in Wharton's childhood home. This included such popular authors as Mark Twain , Bret Harte , and Joel Chandler Harris . She
7345-549: The most lethal acts of revenge ever taken by a writing daughter." In her memoir, A Backward Glance , Wharton describes her mother as indolent, spendthrift, censorious, disapproving, superficial, icy, dry and ironic. Wharton's writings often dealt with themes such as "social and individual fulfillment, repressed sexuality, and the manners of old families and the new elite." Maureen Howard , editor of Edith Wharton: Collected Stories , notes several recurring themes in Wharton's short stories, including confinement and attempts at freedom,
7458-412: The nation. This became known as the " Philosophers Camp ". This event was a landmark in the nineteenth-century intellectual movement, linking nature with art and literature. Although much has been written over many years by scholars and biographers of Emerson's life, little has been written of what has become known as the "Philosophers Camp" at Follensbee Pond. Yet, his epic poem "Adirondac" reads like
7571-410: The nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte . Murat was two years his senior; they became good friends and enjoyed each other's company. The two engaged in enlightening discussions of religion, society, philosophy, and government. Emerson considered Murat an important figure in his intellectual education. While in St. Augustine, Emerson had his first encounter with slavery . At one point, he attended a meeting of
7684-503: The relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic : "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach, by rejecting views of God as separate from the world". He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced
7797-527: The rest of her life, spending winters and springs on the French Riviera at Sainte Claire du Vieux Chateau in Hyères . Wharton was a committed supporter of French imperialism , describing herself as a "rabid imperialist,” and the war solidified her political views. After the war, she traveled to Morocco, as the guest of Resident General Hubert Lyautey and wrote the book In Morocco , full of praise for
7910-501: The school but continued to teach in Cambridge, Massachusetts , until early 1825. Emerson was accepted into the Harvard Divinity School in late 1824, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1828. Emerson's brother Edward, two years younger than he, entered the office of the lawyer Daniel Webster , after graduating from Harvard first in his class. Edward's physical health began to deteriorate, and he soon suffered
8023-414: The social rituals of the New York upper classes. She keenly observed the social changes happening around her, which she later used in her writing. Wharton officially came out as a debutante to society in 1879. She was allowed to bare her shoulders and wear her hair up for the first time at a December dance, which was given by a Society matron, Anna Morton. Wharton began a courtship with Henry Leyden Stevens,
8136-453: The son of Paran Stevens, a wealthy hotelier and real estate investor from rural New Hampshire. His sister, Minnie, married Arthur Paget . The Jones family did not approve of Stevens. In the middle of her debutante season, the Jones family returned to Europe in 1881 for her father's health. In spite of this, her father, George Frederic Jones, died of a stroke in Cannes in 1882. Stevens was with
8249-504: The thinkers, writers, and poets that followed him. "In all my lectures," he wrote, "I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also well-known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau , a fellow Transcendentalist. Emerson was born in Boston , Massachusetts , on May 25, 1803, to Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson , a Unitarian minister. He
8362-435: The town of Concord on September 12, 1835. Two days later, he married Jackson in her hometown of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and moved to the new home in Concord together with Emerson's mother on September 15. Emerson quickly changed his wife's name to Lidian, and would call her Queenie, and sometimes Asia, and she called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward Waldo Emerson . Edward Waldo Emerson
8475-877: The war effort and encouraged America to enter the war. She wrote the popular romantic novel, Summer in 1917, the war novella, The Marne, in 1918, and A Son at the Front, in 1919 (published 1923). When the war ended, she watched the Victory Parade from the Champs Elysees' balcony of a friend's apartment. After four years of intense effort, she decided to leave Paris for the quiet of the countryside. Wharton settled 10 mi (16 km) north of Paris in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt , buying an 18th-century house on seven acres of land that she called Pavillon Colombe. She lived there, in summer and autumn, for
8588-500: The war effort, and opening tuberculosis hospitals. In 1915, Wharton edited a charity benefit volume, The Book of the Homeless , which included essays, art, poetry, and musical scores by many major contemporary European and American artists, including Henry James , Joseph Conrad , William Dean Howells , Anna de Noailles , Jean Cocteau , and Walter Gay , among others. Wharton proposed the book to her publisher, Scribner's, handled
8701-760: The war were due to the depreciation of American currency. From 1866 to 1872, the Jones family visited France , Italy , Germany , and Spain . During her travels, the young Edith became fluent in French , German , and Italian . At the age of nine, she suffered from typhoid fever , which nearly killed her, while the family was at a spa in the Black Forest . After the family returned to the United States in 1872, they spent their winters in New York City and their summers in Newport, Rhode Island . While in Europe, she
8814-410: The war zone, viewing one devastated French village after another. She visited the trenches and was within earshot of artillery fire. She wrote, "We woke to a noise of guns closer and more incessant, and when we went out into the streets, it seemed as if, overnight, a new army had sprung out of the ground". Throughout the war, she worked in charitable efforts for refugees, the injured, the unemployed, and
8927-463: The way all such objects were related and connected. As Robert D. Richardson says, "Emerson's moment of insight into the interconnectedness of things in the Jardin des Plantes was a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward science." Moving north to England, Emerson met William Wordsworth , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and Thomas Carlyle . Carlyle in particular
9040-447: The well-known essays " Self-Reliance ", " The Over-Soul ," " Circles ," " The Poet ," and " Experience ". Together, with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets , but rather, by developing certain ideas, such as individuality , freedom , the ability for mankind to realize almost anything, and
9153-576: The works and letters of Margaret Fuller , who had died in 1850. Within a week of her death, her New York editor, Horace Greeley , suggested to Emerson that a biography of Fuller, to be called Margaret and Her Friends , be prepared quickly "before the interest excited by her sad decease has passed away". Published under the title The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli , Fuller's words were heavily censored or rewritten. The three editors were not concerned about accuracy; they believed public interest in Fuller
9266-533: Was 12 years her senior, at the Trinity Chapel Complex in Manhattan. From a well-established Boston family, he was a sportsman and a gentleman of the same social class and shared her love of travel. The Whartons set up house at Pencraig Cottage in Newport. In 1893, they bought a house named Land's End, on the other side of Newport, for $ 80,000, and moved into it. Wharton decorated Land's End, with
9379-458: Was 18 two years later. The couple moved to Boston, with Emerson's mother, Ruth, moving with them to help take care of Ellen, who was already ill with tuberculosis. Less than two years after that, on February 8, 1831, Ellen died, at age 20, after uttering her last words, "I have not forgotten the peace and joy." Emerson was strongly affected by her death and visited her grave in Roxbury daily. In
9492-607: Was a strong influence on him; Emerson would later serve as an unofficial literary agent in the United States for Carlyle, and in March 1835, he tried to persuade Carlyle to come to America to lecture. The two maintained a correspondence until Carlyle's death in 1881. Emerson returned to the United States on October 9, 1833, and lived with his mother in Newton, Massachusetts . In October 1834, he moved to Concord, Massachusetts , to live with his step-grandfather, Dr. Ezra Ripley , at what
9605-421: Was a student at Harvard at the time, called it "an event without former parallel on our literary annals". Another member of the audience, Reverend John Pierce, called it "an apparently incoherent and unintelligible address". In 1837, Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau . Though they had likely met as early as 1835, in the fall of 1837, Emerson asked Thoreau, "Do you keep a journal?" The question went on to be
9718-1069: Was allowed to read Louisa May Alcott but Wharton preferred Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Charles Kingsley 's The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby . Wharton's mother forbade her from reading many novels and Wharton said she "read everything else but novels until the day of my marriage." Instead Wharton read the classics, philosophy, history, and poetry in her father's library including Daniel Defoe , John Milton , Thomas Carlyle , Alphonse de Lamartine , Victor Hugo , Jean Racine , Thomas Moore , Lord Byron , William Wordsworth , John Ruskin , and Washington Irving . Biographer Hermione Lee describes Wharton as having read herself "out of Old New York" and her influences included Herbert Spencer , Charles Darwin , Friedrich Nietzsche , T. H. Huxley , George Romanes , James Frazer , and Thorstein Veblen . These influenced her ethnographic style of novelization . Wharton developed
9831-555: Was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928, and 1930. Wharton was friend and confidante to many prominent intellectuals of her time: Henry James, Sinclair Lewis , Jean Cocteau , and André Gide were all her guests, at one time or another. Theodore Roosevelt, Bernard Berenson , and Kenneth Clark were valued friends, as well. Particularly notable was her meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald , described by
9944-556: Was at work on a revised edition of The Decoration of Houses , when she suffered a heart attack and collapsed. She died of a stroke on August 11, 1937, at Le Pavillon Colombe , her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt . She died at 5:30 p.m., but her death was not known in Paris. At her bedside was her friend, Mrs. Royall Tyler . Wharton was buried in the American Protestant section of
10057-618: Was custom, he presented an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, a month before his official graduation on August 29, 1821, when he was 18. He did not stand out as a student and graduated in the exact middle of his class of 59 people. In the early 1820s, Emerson was a teacher at the School for Young Ladies (which was run by his brother William). He next spent two years living in a cabin in the Canterbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts , where he wrote and studied nature. In his honor, this area
10170-572: Was discovered, in 2017. It had a radio adaptation broadcast on BBC Radio 3, in 2018. It wouldn't be until 2023, over a century later, that the world stage premiere took place in Canada at the Shaw Festival , directed by Peter Hinton-Davis. She collaborated with Marie Tempest to write another play, but the two only completed four acts, before Marie decided she was no longer interested in costume plays. One of her earliest literary endeavors (1902)
10283-478: Was educated by tutors and governesses . She rejected the standards of fashion and etiquette that were expected of young girls at the time, which were intended to allow women to marry well and to be put on display at balls and parties. She considered these fashions superficial and oppressive. Edith wanted more education than she received, so, she read from her father's library and from the libraries of her father's friends. Her mother forbade her to read novels until she
10396-429: Was her primary residence, until 1911. When living there and while traveling abroad, Wharton was usually driven to appointments by her longtime chauffeur and friend, Charles Cook, a native of nearby South Lee, Massachusetts . When her marriage deteriorated, she decided to move, permanently, to France, living, first, at 53 Rue de Varenne, Paris , in an apartment that belonged to George Washington Vanderbilt II . Wharton
10509-671: Was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. Her other well-known works are The House of Mirth , the novella Ethan Frome , and several notable ghost stories. Edith Newbold Jones was born on January 24, 1862, to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City . To her friends and family, she was known as "Pussy Jones". She had two elder brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward. Frederic married Mary Cadwalader Rawle ; their daughter
10622-528: Was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School , to deliver the school's graduation address, which came to be known as the " Divinity School Address ". Emerson discounted biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God: historical Christianity, he said, had turned Jesus into a "demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo". His comments outraged
10735-570: Was landscape architect Beatrix Farrand . Edith was baptized April 20, 1862, Easter Sunday , at Grace Church . Wharton's paternal family, the Joneses, were a very wealthy and socially prominent family, having made their money in real estate. The saying " keeping up with the Joneses " is said to refer to her father's family. She was related to the Rensselaers , the most prestigious of the old patroon families, who had received land grants from
10848-413: Was later named The Old Manse . Given the budding Lyceum movement , which provided lectures on all sorts of topics, Emerson saw a possible career as a lecturer. On November 5, 1833, he made the first of what would eventually be some 1,500 lectures, "The Uses of Natural History", in Boston. This was an expanded account of his experience in Paris. In this lecture, he set out some of his important beliefs and
10961-428: Was married, and Edith obeyed this command. Wharton wrote and told stories from an early age. When her family moved to Europe and she was just four or five, she started what she called "making up." She invented stories for her family and walked with an open book, turning the pages as if reading while improvising a story. Wharton began writing poetry and fiction as a young girl, and she attempted to write her first novel at
11074-698: Was mostly a literary membership that met the last Saturday of the month at the Boston Parker House Hotel ( Omni Parker House ). William James Stillman was a painter and founding editor of an art journal called the Crayon. Stillman was born and grew up in Schenectady which was just south of the Adirondack mountains. He later traveled there to paint the wilderness landscape and to fish and hunt. He shared his experiences in this wilderness to
11187-433: Was named after his mother's brother Ralph and his father's great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo. Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles. Three other children—Phoebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline—died in childhood. Emerson was of English ancestry, and his family had been in New England since the early colonial period, with Emerson being
11300-531: Was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers." His disagreements with church officials over the administration of the Communion service and misgivings about public prayer eventually led to his resignation in 1832. As he wrote, "This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it." As one Emerson scholar has pointed out, "Doffing
11413-687: Was not prepared for the difficulty in operating Fruitlands. "None of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart", he wrote. After its failure, Emerson helped buy a farm for Alcott's family in Concord which Alcott named " Hillside ". The Dial ceased publication in April 1844; Horace Greeley reported it as an end to the "most original and thoughtful periodical ever published in this country". In 1844, Emerson published his second collection of essays, Essays: Second Series . This collection included "The Poet", "Experience", "Gifts", and an essay entitled "Nature",
11526-546: Was preparing to vacation for the summer, when World War I broke out. Though many fled Paris, she moved back to her Paris apartment on the Rue de Varenne and for four years, she was a tireless and ardent supporter of the French war effort. One of the first causes she undertook, in August 1914, was the opening of a workroom for unemployed women. Here, they were fed and paid one franc a day. What began, with 30 women, soon doubled, to 60 women, and their sewing business began to thrive. When
11639-433: Was published: "Mrs. Manstey's View" had very little success, and it took her more than a year to publish another story. She completed "The Fullness of Life,” following her annual European trip with Teddy. Burlingame was critical of this story, but Wharton did not want to make edits to it. This story, along with many others, speaks about her marriage. She sent Bunner Sisters to Scribner's, in 1892. Burlingame wrote back that it
11752-422: Was rejected by Burlingame, she lost confidence in herself. She started travel writing , in 1894. In 1901, Wharton wrote a two-act play called Man of Genius . This play was about an English man who was having an affair with his secretary. The play was rehearsed but was never produced. Another 1901 play, The Shadow of a Doubt , which also came close to being staged but fell through, was thought to be lost, until it
11865-442: Was said to suffer from asthma and periods of depression. In 1908, Teddy Wharton's mental condition was determined to be incurable. In that year, Wharton began an affair with Morton Fullerton , an author, and foreign correspondent for The Times of London, in whom she found an intellectual partner. She divorced Edward Wharton, in 1913, after 28 years of marriage. Around the same time, she was beset with harsh literary criticism from
11978-472: Was staunchly opposed to slavery, but he did not appreciate being in the public limelight and was hesitant about lecturing on the subject. In the years leading up to the Civil War, he did give a number of lectures, however, beginning as early as November 1837. A number of his friends and family members were more active abolitionists than he, at first, but from 1844 on he more actively opposed slavery. He gave
12091-441: Was temporary and that she would not survive as a historical figure. Even so, it was the best-selling biography of the decade and went through thirteen editions before the end of the century. Walt Whitman published the innovative poetry collection Leaves of Grass in 1855 and sent a copy to Emerson for his opinion. Emerson responded positively, sending Whitman a flattering five-page letter in response. Emerson's approval helped
12204-416: Was the beginning of his career as a lecturer. The profits from this series of lectures were much larger than when he was paid by an organization to talk, and he continued to manage his own lectures often throughout his lifetime. He eventually gave as many as 80 lectures a year, traveling across the northern United States as far as St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and California. On July 15, 1838, Emerson
12317-978: Was the beginning of the Transcendental Club , which served as a center for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on September 19, 1836. On September 1, 1837, women attended a meeting of the Transcendental Club for the first time. Emerson invited Margaret Fuller , Elizabeth Hoar, and Sarah Ripley for dinner at his home before the meeting to ensure that they would be present for the evening get-together. Fuller would prove to be an important figure in Transcendentalism. Emerson anonymously sent his first essay, "Nature", to James Munroe and Company to be published on September 9, 1836. A year later, on August 31, 1837, he delivered his now-famous Phi Beta Kappa address, " The American Scholar ", then entitled "An Oration, Delivered before
12430-529: Was the father of Raymond Emerson . Ellen was named for his first wife, at Lidian's suggestion. He hired Sophia Foord to educate his children. Emerson was poor when he was at Harvard, but was later able to support his family for much of his life. He inherited a fair amount of money after his first wife's death, though he had to file a lawsuit against the Tucker family in 1836 to get it. He received $ 11,600 in May 1834 (equivalent to $ 354,032 in 2023), and
12543-661: Was the translation of the play Es Lebe das Leben ("The Joy of Living"), by Hermann Sudermann. The Joy of Living was criticized for its title, because the heroine swallows poison, at the end, and was a short-lived Broadway production. It was, however, a successful book. Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by subtle use of dramatic irony . Having grown up in upper-class, late-19th-century society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics, in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence . Versions of her mother, Lucretia Jones, often appeared in Wharton's fiction. Biographer Hermione Lee described it as "one of
12656-406: Was too long for Scribner's to publish. This story is believed to be based on an experience she had as a child. It did not see publication until 1916, and it is included in the collection called Xingu . After a visit with her friend, Paul Bourget , she wrote "The Good May Come" and "The Lamp of Psyche.” "The Lamp of Psyche" was a comical story, with verbal wit and sorrow. After "Something Exquisite"
12769-424: Was very critical of her work and wrote public reviews criticizing it. She also wrote about her own experiences with life. "Intense Love's Utterance" is a poem written about Henry Stevens. In 1889, she sent out three poems for publication, to Scribner's , Harper's and Century . Edward L. Burlingame published "The Last Giustiniani" for Scribner's . It was not until Wharton was 29 that her first short story
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