Edith Wharton (24 January, 1862 – 11 August, 1937) was an award winning American writer and designer.
- Edith Wharton was the first woman of win the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence (1920)
- A dramatization of Wharton’s novella The Old Maid won the Pulitzer Prize in 1935.
- During World War I, Wharton did relief work for refugees by setting up hospitals, hostels, and work rooms for jobless women. She was one of the few foreigners in France allowed to travel to the front lines and, in 1916 was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in recognition of her commitment to the displaced.
- Wharton was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from an Ivy League school (Yale).
- Wharton’s home, The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts, was designed and built by her in 1902.
- She described herself as a “rabid imperialist”.
- Wharton like to surround herself with intellectuals who were also her friends including Theodore Roosevelt, Sinclair Lewis, and Henry James.
- Editors of Wharton’s letters described her meeting with F. Schott Fitzgerald as “one of the better known failed encounters in the American literary annals.”
- Wharton was fluent several languages.
- Wharton died in France on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, called today rue Edith Wharton.
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