American · 1862–1937
Edith Wharton won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for "The Age of Innocence," becoming the first woman to receive that honor. The American novelist anatomized Gilded Age New York society with the authority of an insider and the detachment of an exile—she spent her later years in France. Wharton's fiction examined the costs of convention, particularly for women trapped by propriety. Her short stories and novels remain essential American literature.