Edith Newbold Jones (Edith Wharton) (1862-1937) was born in New York City during the American Civil War. She enjoyed a diverse and very successful career as interior and garden designer, short story writer and award-winning novelist. It was The House of Mirth , published in 1905, that made Wharton famous, and in 1921 she became the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her great novella Ethan Frome is also published in the Penguin English Library.