Queer Places:
The Parish of Calvary St. George's, 61 Gramercy Park N, New York, NY 10010, United States

Emelyn Webster "Emily" Washburn (November 2, 1855 - January 19, 1939) was born on November 2, 1855, in Connecticut, USA. She was born to Edward Abiel Washburn (a prominent clergyman and intellectual) and Frances Hall Lindsly. Growing up six years senior to the celebrated American author Edith Wharton (then Edith Jones), Emelyn played an important role in Wharton's early intellectual and creative development.

Edward Abiel Washburn served as the rector of Calvary Church, where Edith Wharton's family (the George Frederick Jones family) lived in the parish and worshipped. Edith and Emelyn Washburn became close friends there during their youth, and Calvary Church later served as the setting for Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence.

Emelyn served as an early confidante and mentor figure during Wharton's youth. Their relationship was deeply rooted in literature and shared ambitions:

At just fifteen years old, Edith Wharton showed her very first written novella, Fast and Loose (1877), exclusively to Emelyn.

Through Emelyn and her father, E. A. Washburn, Wharton was introduced to transcendentalist writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, shaping her early literary tastes.

Wharton's close bond with Emelyn is reflected in historical artifacts, such as personal book inscriptions featuring Edith's initials combined with Emelyn's (e.g., "E.W.W.").

Emelyn Webster Washburn lived well into the 20th century, passing away on January 19, 1939, in Manhattan, New York City, USA.

In looking back at their girlhood friendship and the complex social frameworks of late 19th-century high society, Edith Wharton later reflected on and suspected Emelyn Washburn of what Wharton termed “degeneracy.” Within the context of modern queer history and literary analysis, such retrospective framing by period authors often points to the intense, non-normative emotional attachments, non-conforming gender expressions, or hidden same-sex desires that characterized relationships between independent women of the era before modern sexual identities were formally codified.

References:

Women of the Left Bank, Paris 1900-1940 Paperback – August 1, 1987 by Shari Benstock

Other references:

• Biographical and Genealogical Data: Historical vital statistics records (birth, parentage, and death records for Emelyn Webster Washburn, Edward Abiel Washburn, and Frances Hall Lindsly).
• Edith Wharton Scholarship & Archives: Biographical overviews of Edith Wharton detailing her early youth, her relationship with Emelyn Washburn, the writing of her early novella Fast and Loose, and connections to transcendentalist figures through the Washburn family.
• Literary & Queer History Analysis: Historical and critical commentary examining late 19th-century female friendships, social strictures, and period retrospective terminology concerning non-normative relationships among upper-class women.

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