Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862, in New York City. Her parents, wealthy members of New York's social elite, had a large home in Manhattan and another home in fashionable Newport, Rhode Island. From the time Edith was four until she was about ten, the family lived and traveled throughout Europe, avoiding the economic downturn that occurred in the United States after the Civil War. Edith developed an ear for languages and a taste for art and architecture that stayed with her for her entire life. When the family returned to New York, she did not attend formal school as her two brothers did but was encouraged by her father to study literature and philosophy on her own. Fluent in German, Italian, and French, she read widely. She also began to write, completing her first satirical fiction while she was only fourteen. Her...