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Edith Wharton

Though best known for her novels of manners detailing upper-class New York society in works such as The House of Mirth (1905) and The Age of Innocence (1920), Edith Wharton was the prolific author of more than two dozen novels, story collections, essays, and poems. She was also a highly regarded tastemaker and author of nonfiction manuals such as The Decoration of Houses (1897), Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904), and Italian Backgrounds (1905). Born in 1862 into the privileged, aristocratic milieu of Old New York and financially independent at twenty-one years old, Wharton came of age during what is commonly called the Gilded Age, and her life in many ways paralleled that of her wealthy but longing New York City characters.