Pulitzer Prize Biography Winner
Edith Wharton: A Biography
by R. W. B. Lewis
Summary
R. W. B. Lewis traces the life of novelist Edith Wharton from her constrained childhood in old New York society to her independent later years in France. Drawing on letters and private papers that had long been sealed, the book reveals her unhappy marriage, her affair with journalist Morton Fullerton, and the discipline behind classics such as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. It stands as the definitive portrait that reshaped how readers understand one of America's major writers.
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Historical Context & Significance
The biography won both the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and a National Book Award, and it drew on Wharton papers at Yale that scholars had been unable to access until then.