Edith Wharton
1862–1937
Biography
Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones in New York on 24 January 1862, and she died in France on 11 August 1937. She grew up among the wealthy families of New York and drew on that world for the rest of her career. She was also a designer, and she wrote about the decoration of houses as well as about fiction.
Her novels and stories deal with manners, marriage and money among the rich, and she is one of the sharpest chroniclers of the Gilded Age. Her best-known works include The House of Mirth (1905), the short novel Ethan Frome (1911) and The Age of Innocence (1920). The last of these won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921, making her the first woman to take that prize. She also wrote several memorable ghost stories.
Two of her books are on this site. Ethan Frome, set in a harsh New England farming village, follows a man trapped in a loveless marriage and his longing for a younger woman who lives under the same roof. The Age of Innocence shows the rules of New York society from the inside, through a young man of good family who is engaged to a respectable girl and then falls for a countess with a scandalous past.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
Ethan Frome is a 1911 novella by American author Edith Wharton. It details the story of a man who falls in love with his wife's cousin and the tragedies that result from the ensuing love triangle. The novel has been adapted into a film of the same name. This book uses the racial…
Summary from Wikipedia: Ethan Frome (CC BY-SA 4.0)The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence is a novel by American author Edith Wharton, published on 25 October 1920. It was her eighth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It…
Summary from Wikipedia: The Age of Innocence (CC BY-SA 4.0)The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth is a tragedy about Lily Bart, a well-born but penniless young woman belonging to New York City's high society of the 1890s. Written by American author Edith Wharton, it came out October 14, 1905. The House of Mirth traces Lily's slow two-year social descent…
Summary from Wikipedia: The House of Mirth (CC BY-SA 4.0)