Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on 24th January 1862, during the American Civil War. Wharton published her first short story in 1891; her first story collection, The Greater Inclination , in 1899; a novella called The Touchstone in 1900; and her first novel, The Valley of Decision, in 1902. Her most famous work, The House of Mirth , was published in 1905. She died in 1937.