Edith Newbold Jones was born to a wealthy family in New York City on January 24, 1862, and soon learned the manners and traditions of society life that would characterize her fiction. Because her family lived in Europe for much of her childhood, she was educated abroad and privately. She enjoyed travel and reading from a young age, and while her parents supported these interests, they disapproved of her ambitions to become an author. Her lifelong love of books, foreign places, and nature would figure into her successful career as a writer. Biographers depict her as a lively, congenial woman who made friends easily. This may account for her friendships with such notable men as author Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1885, she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, a banker who was thirteen years her senior. They lived in New York City;Newport, Rhode Island; and Lenox, Massachusetts...