The Decoration of Houses (1897)
Influential interior-design book written with the architect Ogden Codman Jr.
Literature · Novelists
Edith Wharton
1862–1937 · American
Realism; novel of manners
Edith Wharton, born Edith Newbold Jones into wealthy New York society, became its sharpest chronicler in novels such as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. In 1921 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A close friend of Henry James, she settled in France, where her relief work in the First World War earned her the Legion of Honour.
How to spot them
- ▸Old New York society: Newland Archer, Countess Ellen Olenska and May Welland
- ▸Lily Bart in The House of Mirth; Undine Spragg in The Custom of the Country
- ▸Ethan Frome: bleak New England, Starkfield, Mattie Silver and a sledding crash
- ▸First woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (1921)
- ▸The Mount, her house in Lenox, Massachusetts; friend of Henry James
Key works
The House of Mirth (1905)
Lily Bart's decline as she fails to secure a wealthy husband in New York society
Ethan Frome (1911)
Tragic novella of a poor Massachusetts farmer, his invalid wife Zeena and her cousin Mattie Silver
The Custom of the Country (1913)
The ruthless social climb of Undine Spragg through a string of marriages
Summer (1917)
Novella of a young woman's sexual awakening in rural New England, a companion to Ethan Frome
The Age of Innocence (1920)
Newland Archer torn between his fiancée May Welland and the unconventional Ellen Olenska in 1870s New York
A Backward Glance (1934)
Her autobiography
Key ideas
- Anatomised the rigid codes and hypocrisies of the New York upper class she was born into
- Showed how society's conventions trap individuals, especially women with limited economic options
Quick-fire facts
- •Born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City in 1862
- •The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, making her the first woman to win it
- •The Pulitzer jury had favoured Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, but the board overruled them
- •Designed and built The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts
- •Moved permanently to France; awarded the Legion of Honour in 1916 for wartime refugee relief work
- •A close friend of Henry James
- •Martin Scorsese filmed The Age of Innocence in 1993
- •Died at Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt near Paris and is buried at Versailles
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Sources
- Hermione Lee — Edith Wharton
- Edith Wharton — A Backward Glance