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Edith Wharton

The novelist known as Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937) was born as Edith Newbold Jones. The Joneses were a wealthy New York family and one of Wharton’s biographers claims that the phrase “Keeping up with the Joneses” is in reference to her father’s family.
As part of America’s privileged class, Edith Wharton was well-acquainted with many public figures of the day and counted Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis amongst her friends (Lewis dedicated his novel Babbitt to her).
Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature, taking that honor in 1921 for The Age of Innocence. Wharton’s 1911 novel, Ethan Frome has become a staple of American Literature and is widely studied in classrooms around the world.

In 1916, she was given France’s highest honor, appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, for her contribution to the War effort. We feature her work in our collection of World War I Literature. Wharton was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Yale University in 1923, she was the first woman to claim that distinction. We feature Wharton in our collection of Pulitzer Prize Winners.

Books

  • A Motor-Flight Through France
  • Ethan Frome
  • Summer
  • The Age of Innocence
  • The Bunner Sisters
  • The Custom of the Country
  • The House of Mirth

    • Poems

  • Aeropagus
  • A Failure
  • A Grave
  • A Hunting Song
  • All Saints
  • All Souls
  • A Meeting
  • An Autumn Sunset
  • Artemis to Actaeon
  • Belgium
  • Botticelli’s Madonna in the Louvre
  • Chartres
  • Euryalus
  • Experience
  • Grief
  • Happiness
  • Jade
  • Life
  • Margaret of Cortona
  • Moonrise over Tyringham
  • Mould and Vase
  • Non Dolet
  • Ogrin the Hermit
  • Orpheus
  • Patience
  • Phaedra
  • Pomegranate Seed
  • Summer Afternoon (Bodiam Castle, Sussex)
  • Survival
  • The Bread of Angels
  • The Eumenides
  • The Last Giustianini
  • The Mortal Lease
  • The Old Pole Star
  • The One Grief
  • The Parting Day
  • The Sonnet
  • The Tomb of Ilaria Giunigi
  • The Torch-Bearer
  • Two Backgrounds
  • Uses
  • Versalius in Zante
  • Wants
  • With the Tide
  • You and You; To the American Private in the Great War

    • Short Stories

  • A Coward
  • A Cup of Cold Water
  • Afterward
  • A Journey
  • April Showers
  • A Venetian Night’s Entertainment
  • Crucial Instances
  • Expiation
  • In Trust
  • Kerfol
  • Mrs. Manstey’s View
  • Souls Belated
  • The Best Man
  • The Bolted Door
  • The Choice
  • The Descent of Man
  • The Dilettante
  • The Fullness Of Life
  • The House Of The Dead Hand
  • The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
  • The Letters
  • The Mission of Jane
  • The Muse’s Tragedy
  • The Other Two
  • The Pelican
  • The Portrait
  • The Pot-Boiler
  • The Pretext
  • The Quicksand
  • The Reckoning
  • The Triumph of Night
  • The Twilight of the God
  • The Verdict
  • Xingu