Unlike many women of her time, Edith Wharton benefited from her family’s great wealth, and she used her financial advantages to the fullest. Over the course of her life, she wrote several important novels (including The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth).
In 1921, Wharton became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction when her novel The Age of Innocence was awarded the prize. She also became influential in the field of interior design, befriended many prominent intellectuals such as Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt, and devoted herself to caring for refugees during World War I.
Living in France at the time of the war, Wharton not only wrote articles on the conflict, but also provided food and housing to women and children displaced by the war. France bestowed the Cross of the Legion of Honor upon Wharton in thanks for her relief work.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/02/beach-reads-summer_n_7699708.html?ir=Women&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000046
