Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist who portrayed the rigid upper-class society of old New York into which she was born. Author of The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence, she became in 1921 the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She spent the second half of her life in France.
Works
Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence
Old New York
Edith Newbold Jones was born in New York in 1862 into a wealthy and old family; the phrase keeping up with the Joneses is sometimes said to refer to her relatives. She was educated by governesses and spent several years of her childhood in Europe, where she learned French, German and Italian.
Her family considered writing an unsuitable occupation for a lady. In 1885 she married Edward Wharton, known as Teddy, a Boston gentleman twelve years older who shared none of her intellectual interests. Their marriage was unhappy and ended in divorce in 1913.
The novelist
Wharton first wrote about architecture and interior decoration, then turned to fiction. The House of Mirth (1905), about Lily Bart, a beautiful woman destroyed by the society she longs to belong to, was a best-seller. She built a large house in Massachusetts, The Mount, and became a friend of Henry James.
In 1911 she published Ethan Frome, a stark tragedy set in a snowbound New England village. The following year she moved permanently to France, where she lived in Paris and later at Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt and Hyères.
France and the Pulitzer
During the First World War, Wharton organised workshops for unemployed women, hostels for refugees and schools for children who had fled the fighting, and visited the front lines as a reporter. France awarded her the Legion of Honour in 1916.
The Age of Innocence (1920), about a lawyer torn between his conventional fiancée and her unconventional cousin, the Countess Olenska, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. She wrote many more books and an autobiography, A Backward Glance, and died in France in 1937.
Anecdotes
A Pulitzer by default
The Pulitzer jury of 1921 first recommended Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, but the board, finding it too critical, gave the prize to The Age of Innocence instead. Wharton, who admired Lewis, was embarrassed; he dedicated his next novel, Babbitt, to her.
The Mount
Wharton designed her house in Lenox, Massachusetts, The Mount, according to the principles she had set out in her book The Decoration of Houses. Restored after decades of neglect, it is now a museum and cultural centre.
Frequently asked questions
What are Edith Wharton's most famous novels?
The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of Innocence (1920).
Was Edith Wharton the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize?
She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 1921, for The Age of Innocence.
Why did Edith Wharton live in France?
She loved French culture and settled there in 1912 after the end of her marriage, remaining for the rest of her life.