Edith Jones Wharton (1862–1937) was born in New York City into a family of merchants, bankers, and lawyers. In 1885 she married Edward Wharton of Boston. They shared a love of travel, while maintaining a home she designed, The Mount, in Lenox, MA. After their divorce in 1913, Edith Wharton settled in Paris. Throughout World War I, she was active in relief work, including raising tens of thousands of dollars for the war effort and opening tuberculosis hospitals, and in 1916, she was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor for her service to her adopted country. Her novels include The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913), Summer (1917) and most famously The Age of Innocence (1920), which made her the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.