Editing Edith Wharton (section)

===Later years===
''[[The Age of Innocence]]'' (1920) won the [[1921 Pulitzer Prize]] for Fiction,<ref>{{cite book|last= Nelson|first= Randy F.|title= The Almanac of American Letters|location= Los Altos, California|publisher= William Kaufmann, Inc.|year= 1981|page= [https://archive.org/details/almanacofamerica00nels/page/9 9]|isbn= 0-86576-008-X|url= https://archive.org/details/almanacofamerica00nels/page/9}}</ref> making Wharton the first woman to win the award. The three fiction judges – literary critic [[Stuart P. Sherman|Stuart Pratt Sherman]], literature professor [[Robert Morss Lovett]], and novelist [[Hamlin Garland]] – voted to give the prize to [[Sinclair Lewis]] for his satire ''Main Street'', but Columbia University's advisory board, led by conservative university president [[Nicholas Murray Butler]], overturned their decision and awarded the prize to ''The Age of Innocence''.<ref>"Reader's Almanac: A Controversial Pulitzer Prize Brings Edith Wharton and Sinclair Lewis Together." Library of America, June 28, 2011. Web. March 11, 2015.</ref> Wharton was also nominated for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] in 1927, 1928, and 1930.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=10128|title=Nomination Database – Literature|website=www.nobelprize.org|access-date=September 14, 2017}}</ref>

Wharton was friend and confidante to many prominent intellectuals of her time: Henry James, [[Sinclair Lewis]], [[Jean Cocteau]], and [[André Gide]] were all her guests, at one time or another. Theodore Roosevelt, [[Bernard Berenson]], and [[Kenneth Clark]] were valued friends, as well. Particularly notable was her meeting with [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]], described by the editors of her letters as "one of the better known failed encounters in the American literary annals." She spoke fluent French, Italian, and German, and many of her books were published in both French and English.

In 1934, Wharton's [[autobiography]], ''A Backward Glance,'' was published. In the view of Judith E. Funston, writing on Edith Wharton in ''American National Biography'', <blockquote>What is most notable about ''A Backward Glance,'' however, is what it does not tell: her criticism of Lucretia Jones [her mother], her difficulties with Teddy, and her affair with Morton Fullerton, which did not come to light until her papers, deposited in Yale's [[Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library|Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library]], were opened in 1968.<ref>Judith E. Funston, "Edith Wharton", in ''American National Biography''; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; Vol. 23, pp. 111–112. {{ISBN|0-19-512802-8}}.</ref></blockquote>
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