The Choice

Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.

For her novel The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature. Although wealthy and female, she was also one of the few American civilians who traveled to the front lines in France during World War I. She wrote a series of articles about that experience, and in 1916 was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. She remained in France until her death in 1937, but she did return to the United States on one occasion to get an honorary doctorate degree from Yale. Despite the time she spent away from the United States, Edith Wharton is celebrated for her novels that perfectly captured (and gently criticized) the upper class in America.