Edith Newbold Jones was born in New York on 24th January 1862. Born into wealth, this background of privilege gave her a wealth of experience to eventually, after several false starts, produce many works based on it culminating in her 1921 Pulitzer Prize winning novel 'The Age of Innocence'

Marriage to Edward Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years her senior in 1885 seemed to offer much and for some years they travelled extensively. After some years it was apparent that her husband suffered from acute depression and so the travelling ceased and they retired to 'The Mount', their estate designed by Edith. By 1908 his condition was said to be incurable and prior to divorcing Edward in 1913 she began an affair, in 1908, with Morton Fullerton, a Times journalist, who was her intellectual equal and allowed her writing talents to push forward and write the novels for which she is so well known.

Acknowledged as one of the great American writers Wharton was also a dazzling though largely unrecognised poet. Her talents allowed her to create poems that both capture and explore many situations of life and society.

Edith Wharton died of a stroke in 1937 at the Domaine Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, in France.