Today in Literature History…

On this day in 1891, Edith Wharton's first published story, "Mrs. Manstey's View," was accepted by Scribner's Magazine. Wharton was twenty-nine years old, brought up in wealth and high society, and recently married to a prominent banker; she was as opposite to her destitute heroine as she was to being a struggling young writer, and her first story throws the write-about-what-you-know rule out the window.