Which author won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Age of Innocence?

Edith Wharton won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Age of Innocence.

Published in 1920, the novel is set among New York City's wealthy upper class during the 1870s. Its protagonist, Newland Archer, is engaged to May Welland, but he becomes increasingly drawn to May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, whose return to New York challenges the community's strict social expectations.

Wharton presents old New York society as polished and civilized on the surface but governed by rigid rules about marriage, reputation, gender, and class. The title is ironic: the society's apparent innocence depends partly on silence, exclusion, and carefully maintained appearances.

The Age of Innocence was Wharton's twelfth novel and became the first novel by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The award was announced in 1921. The book is sometimes mistakenly treated as a simple romance, but its wider subject is the pressure exerted by social convention.