Edith Wharton, the accomplished and famous author of scores of novels and almost a hundred published short stories, was born Edith Newbold Jones to a wealthy family in New York City. She married Edward Wharton in 1883 but both members of the union suffered from emotional disorders, "Teddy" to a debilitating extent that brought about a divorce in 1908. Wharton settled permanently in France in 1911 and died there from a stroke in 1937. (By John Osborne)