Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton grew up in the upper rungs of New York society in the midst of the Gilded Age. Her upbringing inspired the work that would eventually cement her place in the American literary canon.

Her childhood travels between France, Germany and Italy developed in her a love for language. Her early life in New York City and Newport, R.I., introduced her to the rigidity and privilege of the high society that she would later criticize in her fiction.

Over a career that spanned more than 40 years, Wharton would author more than 40 books — novels, collections of short stories and poetry, as well as essays and manuals on interior design and architecture. But it was “The Age of Innocence,” published in 1920, that would make her the first woman to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

The decision to award the Pulitzer to Wharton stirred some controversy. The jury charged with choosing a winner had chosen Sinclair Lewis’s “Main Street” for the prize instead. But that decision was ultimately overruled by the Pulitzer board. 

Wharton’s reaction to her win, captured in a correspondence with Lewis, was not celebratory. 

“When I discovered that I was being rewarded — by one of our leading Universities — for uplifting American morals, I confess I did despair,” she wrote.

— Max Greenwood

photo: Library of Congress