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A Poem by Edith Wharton: 'Patience' - The Atlantic

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The writer Edith Wharton—born Edith Jones—was not like other children. Growing up in a family of 19th-century aristocrats, she had plenty of privileges: endless reading material, travels to inspire her, governesses to talk with. And yet, she was expected to be feminine and demure, and her literary inclinations were discouraged. That didn’t stop her: Deprived of anything to write on, she began using paper from parcels. She wrote her first novel at 11, and began her second, titled Fast and Loose, at 14. Her collection Verses was printed when she was 16; after it ended up in the hands of editor William Dean Howells, The Atlantic published five of her works. Wharton’s 1880 poem “Patience,” which came out when she was 18, might seem uncharacteristic, then: It’s an ode to the kind of dutiful restraint that, if she had practiced it, might have kept her from ever becoming the Edith Wharton we know today. But while she was gloriously impatient in her life and her literary output, she was also u

The writer Edith Wharton—born Edith Jones—was not like other children. Growing up in a family of 19th-century aristocrats, she had plenty of privileges : endless reading material, travels to inspire her, governesses to talk with. And yet, she was expected to be feminine and demure, and her literary inclinations were discouraged. That didn’t stop her: Deprived of anything to write on, she began using paper from parcels. She wrote her first novel at 11, and began her second, titled Fast and Loose , at 14. Her collection Verses was printed when she was 16; after it ended up in the hands of editor

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