Privately printed in Newport by one of her parents (in her memoir, Wharton credited her mother; elsewhere, her father), Verses contains 24 poems by Wharton, née Jones, and 5 translations of German poets. In her own copy, she wrote “Who wrote these verses and this volume owns/ Her unpoetic name is Edith Jones.”
A friend of her brother Harry read a copy and asked for more poems which he then sent to Longfellow. This led to five of her poems being published in 1880 in The Atlantic Monthly when she was only 18 years old.
Published in 1878