Born into a distinguished family, Wharton was educated privately at home and in Europe.
The best of her early tales were collected in The Greater Inclination (1899). Her novel The Valley of Decision (1902) was followed in 1905 by the critically and popularly successful The House of Mirth, which established her as a leading writer. After 1907 she lived in France, visiting the United States only at rare intervals. In 1913 she was divorced from her husband, who had been committed to a mental hospital.
In the two decades following The House of Mirth—before the quality of her work began to decline under the demands of writing for women's magazines—she wrote numerous novels, including The Reef (1912), The Custom of the Country (1913), Summer (1917), and The Age of Innocence (1920, Pulitzer Prize). Her best-known work is perhaps the long tale Ethan Frome (1911), which exploits the grimmer possibilities of the New England farm life she had observed from her home in Lenox, Mass. She also wrote many short stories and poems, several books of travel reflecting her interest in architecture and landscape gardening, and the manual The Writing of Fiction (1925).
Works by Edith Wharton
The Greater Inclination (1899)
The Valley of Decision (1902)
The House of Mirth (1905)
Ethan Frome (1911)
The Reef (1912)
The Custom of the Country (1913)
Summer (1917)
The Age of Innocence (1920, Pulitzer Prize)
The Writing of Fiction (1925)
Twilight Sleep (1927)
Hudson River Bracketed (1929)
The Gods Arrive (1932)
A Backward Glance (1934)
The Buccaneers (1938)
Her novel Twilight Sleep was a best-seller in 1927, but the most ambitious project of her later years was the novel Hudson River Bracketed (1929) and its sequel, The Gods Arrive (1932), books comparing the cultures of Europe and the region of the United States she knew. Her best writing of that period was in the posthumous The Buccaneers (1938). Her autobiography, A Backward Glance, appeared in 1934.
Wharton was a committed supporter of French imperialism, describing herself as a "rabid imperialist", and the war solidified her political conservatism.[6] After World War I, she travelled to Morocco as the guest of the resident general, Gen. Hubert Lyautey and wrote a book In Morocco, about her experiences. Wharton's writing on her Moroccan travels is full of praise for the French administration and for Lyautey and his wife in particular.
She was also a garden designer, interior designer, and taste-maker of her time. She wrote several design books, including her first published work, The Decoration of Houses of 1897, co-authored by Ogden Codman. Another is the generously illustrated Italian Villas and Their Gardens of 1904.