"Originally published in 1907, this little-known novel by Edith Wharton (1862-1937), the author of The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome, was considered controversial for its frank treatment of such issues as labor and industrial condition, drug addiction, mercy killing, desire, and divorce and second marriages."
Edith Wharton was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper class New York "aristocracy" to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.