Afterward

Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.


'Afterward' is a short story by Edith Wharton that was initially published in 1910. It tells us about a ghost haunting a man who has made a mistake in his past. The ghost can be seen as a metaphor for the man's internal voice.