Edith Wharton
American Novelist
1862 – 1937 A.D.

Edith Wharton, an American novelist, born in New York, married to Edward Wharton of Boston, and has lived much abroad, chiefly in Paris. She has written many novels and short stories notable for their clean-cut brilliance and finished artistry. Among her best known stories are: The Valley of Decision, Sanctuary, The Greater Inclination and The Custom of the Country.

The House of Mirth, published in 1906, made a deep impression, and that novel in point of characterization, and as finely executed picture of a phase of American society, is probably her highest achievement in fiction.

In 1915 Mrs. Wharton wrote Fighting France, and edited The Book of the Homeless, to which well-known writers and illustrators contributed in order to aid the Belgian refugees whom the German invasion had brought to want. In other ways she did much for sufferers from the great war in 1916, being rewarded by the cross of the French Legion of Honor.

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.