Best known as a novelist of manners, Wharton chronicled the cruel excesses of American genteel society both at home and abroad at the beginning of the twentieth century in works ranging from The House of Mirth (1905) and Ethan Frome (1911) to The Age of Innocence (1920) and The Buccaneers (1938). Her carefully crafted, psychologically complex fiction also reflects a concern for the status of women in society and for the moral decay she observed beneath the outward propriety of the social elite. Critics have often compared her subject matter, tone, and style with those of Henry James, her friend and mentor, but Wharton has also received recognition for her original observations on the conflict between social convention and the inner self.

Biographical Information

Born into a wealthy New York City family, Wharton was privately educated by a series of governesses and tutors both at home and abroad, who schooled her in...