Edith Wharton

One of the greatest figures in American literary history, Edith Wharton (1862-1937) presented the information available on American experience. Author of more than 40 volumes - novels, short stories, poems, fiction - Wharton had a long and amazing life. She was born during the Civil War, inspired by her childhood writing work Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and devoted to various friends such as Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt; yet she had studied with William Faulkner, James Joyce, and T. Eli Eliot, and she had actually met Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her upbringing gave him insight at a high level, while her sense of humor and reverence expressed revealed a myth that resonated with many listeners. She was recognized by the Legion Legion of Honor for her artistic work during World War I and the Pulitzer Prize in her novel The Age of Innocence (1920), and in 1923 she became the first woman to be honored by Yale. Wharton was a member of the National Institute of Art and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.