Edith Wharton Won the Pulitzer for a Book They Misread

Edith Wharton Won the Pulitzer for a Book They Misread In 1921 the Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to The Age of Innocence, and Edith Wharton became the first woman ever to win it. She was not the jury's choice. The three judges had voted for Sinclair Lewis and Main Street; Columbia University's advisory board overruled them because Lewis's novel failed the "wholesome" requirement written into the terms of the prize. So they gave it instead to a book about a New York society that quietly destroys the people inside it — on the grounds that it uplifted American morals. When Lewis wrote to congratulate her, she replied: "When I discovered that I was being rewarded — by one of our leading Universities — for uplifting American morals, I confess I did despair." She then invited him to visit. He dedicated his next novel, Babbitt, to her. She was born Edith Newbold Jones in 1862, into the family the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" is said to describe — a claim this film flags as traditional rather than documented. Her mother forbade her to read novels until she married. When she was eleven she showed her mother a story she had written, and after her mother's verdict she wrote only poetry. She married Edward "Teddy" Wharton in 1885. He suffered chronic depression from the late 1880s; by 1908 it was assessed as incurable. In 1909 he sold some of her holdings, took $50,000 from her trust, and bought a Boston house where he installed a mistress. They divorced in 1913 after twenty-eight years. Between those two facts she became a professional. Her literary income in 1906 was $32,000 — about $704,000 today. And in the war she stayed in Paris: a workroom for unemployed women in August 1914, the American Hostels for Refugees, the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee sheltering nearly 900 Belgian children, six expeditions to the front, and The Book of the Homeless in 1916 — fifty-seven original works she solicited herself from Henry James, Conrad, Hardy, Yeats, Cocteau, Sarah Bernhardt, Rodin, Monet, Renoir and Stravinsky. France made her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in April 1916. CHAPTERS 0:00 Rewarded for being wholesome 1:16 Born inside it 3:28 The marriage 5:02 The first book 7:44 Leaving 8:35 The war 11:12 The prize 14:38 What she was This is the ninth film in a series on Gilded Age New York, and the counterpart to the seventh. Ward McAllister wrote down how that society worked and it destroyed him. Wharton wrote down the same world and was given a Pulitzer, a Yale doctorate and the Legion of Honour. The difference was not talent. He was staff; she was born inside it. SOURCES The Age of Innocence (1920) and the 1921 Pulitzer Prize decision, including the fiction jury's recommendation of Main Street and the advisory board's reversal. Wharton's letter to Sinclair Lewis. The Decoration of Houses (1897, with Ogden Codman Jr.). Records of her marriage, separation and 1913 divorce. Her First World War relief organisations and the Legion of Honour citation of 18 April 1916. The Book of the Homeless (1916). Yale's award of an honorary Doctor of Letters in 1923. Where a claim is traditional rather than documented, the narration says so — including "keeping up with the Joneses". The Yale degree is stated precisely: she was the first woman to receive that particular degree from Yale, not the first woman Yale honoured. IMAGE CREDITS All images public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, originally held by the Library of Congress, the National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and others. The most used are listed here; full per-image provenance is kept in the production manifest. Note: there are no public-domain photographs of The Mount, Wharton's house in Lenox. Every image of it is modern and CC-licensed, so period material stands in for it. Scribner's- Charles Dana Gibson, August MET DP867296 The Book of the Homeless (New York, Charles Scribner's S John Astor Astor as Henry IV of France Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Martin, who expended nearly $400,00 Main Street (1920) title page Puck's Suggestion for the World's Fair, The Colossus of Edith Wharton by Edward Harrison, 1870, oil on canvas, f Main Street (1920) cover New York Sunday Herald, May 31st 1896. Yale's great henl Edith Wharton as a young woman, ca. 1889 Main Street 15 John Jacob Astor and Mrs. Bradley Martin leading the Qua Broadway, Manhattan, view north from 39th Street - jpg v John Jacob Astor House, by Rossiter, H. J. Astor Trust Bldg. 5th Av. and 42nd St. LCCN99402753 Mrs. William Astor (Caroline Webster Schermerhorn, 1831– Currier and Ives - New York showing Equitable Life build TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY (held by) UNION LEAGUE CLUB (at #GildedAge #History #EdithWharton