Edith Wharton is one of the most successful and prolific of American writers at the turn of the century, author of such acclaimed novels as The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence. In this absorbing Pulitzer Prize-winning biography R.W.B. Lewis paints a vivid picture of her rich and varied life: her writings and travelling, her friendships with luminaries of the period such as Henry James and Kenneth Clarke, and the great, all-consuming love affair of her middle age. With a backdrop of old New York, Edwardian England, Paris of la belle epoque, the First World War and the French Riviera, Lewis places Edith Wharton at the very centre of the changing literary world of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.