Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was an American novelist and short story writer known for her incisive portrayals of Gilded Age society and its rigid social conventions.
Her most celebrated works include *The House of Mirth* and *The Age of Innocence*, for which she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921.
Wharton's writing examines the tensions between individual desire and social expectation, often focusing on the constrained lives of women in wealthy New York circles.
Long-established family fortune
- new moneySelf-earned, not inherited wealth
- social climbingSeeking higher status
- nouveau richeRecently wealthy, often showy
- conspicuous consumptionFlaunting wealth through purchases
Fifth Avenue · Vanderbilt · robber baron · industrialization · ostentation · patronage · brownstone · Knickerbocker
Rule by hereditary elite
- eliteSuperior select group
- debutanteFormally introduced young woman
- ballroomVenue for formal dances
- etiquetteRules of polite conduct
socialite · manor · gentry · haute couture · cotillion · marriage market · dowry · scandal
Unidealized portrayal of workers' lives
- verisimilitudeAppearance of being factual
- naturalismWorldview excluding the supernatural
- detailSingle small element
- observationAttentive watching or remark
critique · authenticity · nuance · irony · determinism · moral complexity · interior life · manners
- novellasMid-length fictional works
- short storiesBrief prose narratives
- prose styleWriter's characteristic expression
- ironyMeaning opposite to words
satire · social commentary · tragic heroines · characterization · dialogue · narrative · psychological depth · publishing
Date between 1920-1922
- recognitionPerceiving something as known
- achievementAccomplished goal or deed
- laureateCelebrated achievement recipient
- distinctionNotable difference or honor
old money
Long-established family fortune
- new moneySelf-earned, not inherited wealth
- social climbingSeeking higher status
- nouveau richeRecently wealthy, often showy
conspicuous consumption · Fifth Avenue · Vanderbilt · robber baron · industrialization · ostentation · patronage · brownstone · Knickerbocker · carriage trade
aristocracy
Rule by hereditary elite
etiquette · socialite · manor · gentry · haute couture · cotillion · marriage market · dowry · scandal · divorce
social realism
Unidealized portrayal of workers' lives
- verisimilitudeAppearance of being factual
- naturalismWorldview excluding the supernatural
- detailSingle small element
observation · critique · authenticity · nuance · irony · determinism · moral complexity · interior life · manners · disillusionment
Ethan Frome
- novellasMid-length fictional works
- short storiesBrief prose narratives
- prose styleWriter's characteristic expression
irony · satire · social commentary · tragic heroines · characterization · dialogue · narrative · psychological depth · publishing
1921
Date between 1920-1922
- recognitionPerceiving something as known
- achievementAccomplished goal or deed
- laureateCelebrated achievement recipient
- American AuthorsMark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Twain, Poe, Hawthorne
- Literary AuthorsC.S. Lewis, Dostoevsky, J.R.R. Tolkien, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde
- NovelistsStephen King, Agatha Christie, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen
- high societygossip, socialites, socialite, aristocrats, aristocrat
- Women WritersJane Austen, Emily Bronte, Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Anne Bronte
- American Women WritersEmily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Emma Lazarus
Edith WhartonJohn Steinbeck
Upton Sinclair · Jack London · Zora Neale Hurston · Richard Wright · Charles Bukowski
Edith WhartonJack Kerouac
Henry Miller · Walt Whitman · Allen Ginsberg · Hunter S. Thompson · Charles Bukowski
Edith WhartonErnest Hemingway
Jack London · Louis L'Amour · Herman Melville · Cormac McCarthy · James Fenimore Cooper
edit, editor, edition, editing, edited, editors, editorial, editorials, editorship