Wharton, Edith Newbold Jones (1862-1937)

Wharton, Edith Newbold Jones (1862-1937)

American novelist and short-story writer, strongly influenced by Henry James, best known for her studies of the tragedies and ironies in the lives of members of middle-class and aristocratic New York society in the 19th century. Her work is marked by penetrating psychological characterization, a preoccupation with moral problems, and a strict adherence to artistic form; in addition to that of James, the influence of Gustave Flaubert, George Eliot, Paul Bourget, and Marcel Proust has been found in her books.

Her works include The Greater Inclination ( 1899), short stories; The Touchstone ( 1900); Crucial Instances ( 1901), short stories; The Valley of Decision ( 1902); Sanctuary ( 1903); Italian Backgrounds ( 1905); The House of Mirth ( 1905); Madame de Treymes ( 1907); The Fruit of the Tree ( 1907); The Hermit and the Wild Woman ( 1908), short stories; Artemis to Actaeon ( 1909), poetry; Tales of Men and Ghosts ( 1910); Ethan Frome ( 1911); The Reef ( 1912); The Costum of the Country ( 1913); Fighting France ( 1915), on World War I; Xingu, and Other Stories ( 1916); Summer ( 1917); French Ways and Their Meaning ( 1919); The Marne ( 1918); In Morocco ( 1920); THhe Age of Innocence ( 1920), awarded the 1921 Pulitzer prize; Glimpses of the Moon ( 1922); A Son at the Front ( 1923); Old New York ( 1924), consisting of False Dawn, The Old Maid, The Spark, and New Year's Day, all novelettes; The Writing of Fiction ( 1925); The Mother's Recompense ( 1925); Here and Beyond ( 1926), short stories; Twilight Sleep ( 1927); The Children ( 1928); Hudson River Bracketed ( 1929), to which The Gods Arrive ( 1932) is a sequel; Certain People ( 1930), Human Nature ( 1933), The World Over ( 1936), and Ghosts ( 1937), more volumes of short stories; A Backward Glance ( 1934), an autobiography; The Buccaneers ( 1938), an uncompleted novel. The House of Mirth, The Old Maid (a Pulitzer prize-winning play), and Ethan Frome were successfully dramatized.