Crucial Instances

A child of one of the most prominent families in New York, Edith Wharton was a shy girl who felt alienated from the social circles in which she was born to reign. Perhaps the persistent rumor that the family's English tutor - not family patriarch George Jones - was her real father was a source of her discomfort. Wharton's novels often center around heroines relegated to the fringes of high society, and testify to the tragic limits circumscribing women in traditional American society. Celebrated works include House of Mirth (1905) and the Pulitzer Prize winning The Age of Innocence (1920).