Edith Wharton(1862-1937) is a central figure in American literature, a masterful chronicler of her age and prolific writer in many modes. Her major works includeThe House of Mirth(1905),Ethan Frome(1911),The Custom of the Country(1913) andThe Age of Innocence(1920), for which she received the Pulitzer Prize, the first awarded to a woman. Cynthia Griffin Wolff, volume editor, is professor of Literature emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author ofA Feast of Words- The Triumph of Edith Wharton.
The Library of America has now followed its initial Wharton collection, containing the major novels, with a second one devoted to her shorter fiction and autobiographical writings. . . . Edith Wharton's triumph as an artist is finally that her personal quest for identity became the basis for a larger vision. Cynthia Griffin Wolff traces the writer's evolution from emotionally disenfranchised child to completely realized novelist. --New York Newsday