Edith Wharton is one of America's most celebrated female novelists, with an esteemed devotion to fiction works. Wharton was born Edith Jones in 1862, into an upper class New York City family. She was engaged at a young age, yet the marriage was called off because of the Jones family's snobbish reputation. Jones finally married Edward Wharton in 1885, though and though her marriage soon went to ruins, she remained married to Wharton for over twenty years. Edith Wharton finally divorced her husband in 1913, but never relinquished his last name. The loveless marriage Wharton endured for 28 years ...

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... picture of present-day life. They pointed out the aspects that American society had in common with the general realities of life. In the late 1800's, William Dean Howells and Henry James, the two most famous realists of the nineteenth century, concentrated on changing American life. They believed novels "should present life how it is, not how it might be." Howell's literature ... author of the realism period, was born. He is not know for being an exciting author but he had a great impact on the later well-known authors, Mark Twain and Henry James. He felt that writing should be "simple,...

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• Grade Level: High School