Edith Wharton pushed the boundaries of what women were permitted to accomplish–– in life and in literature. She remains one of the most significant voices of the Gilded Age, having used her nuanced understanding of upper-class society to explore and critique old New York society.

Wharton was born in 1862 to an upper-class New York family. In her life, like all women of her station, she was expected to marry well and participate in high society, but she found these requirements strict and suffocating. Instead, she wrote, challenging the expectations of what women were capable of. In her long career, she wrote over forty works, including The Age of Innocence (1920), Ethan Frome (1911), and The House of Mirth (1905). In 1921, The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer Prize, making Wharton the first female recipient of the award. Many of her novels engage with the struggles she faced from the suffocation of class expectations. Her first-hand knowledge of the upper-class of New York and her ability to analyze and criticize its society earned her a large and devoted readership. To this day, her work is some of the most significant explorations of the Gilded Age.

Wharton did more than just write fiction. After her marriage fell apart due to the worsening mental state of her husband, she moved to Paris. When the first world war started, she stayed in France, working as a journalist documenting the atrocities of the front lines. Additionally, she developed a network of philanthropic organizations to benefit the underprivileged and underpowered in the city.

Wharton died in 1937 at age 75. She is buried in Versailles.