Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Her work dissected the social codes, moral constraints, and hidden tensions of Gilded Age and Progressive Era high society. Her fiction blends psychological insight, precise social observation, and elegant, controlled prose, often revealing the quiet tragedies that unfold beneath rigid class expectations. Wharton’s major works, including The House of Mirth , Ethan Frome , and The Age of Innocence , have secured her place as one of the central figures of early 20th-century American literature.