বায়োগ্রাফি: In 1921, Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. She was born as Edith Newbold Jones to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander at their in New York City. Her paternal family were so wealthy and socially prominent that the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" was inspired by them. Edith wanted more education than was the society approved of women in her time, so she read from her father's library and from the libraries of her father's friends. Edith obeyed her mother’s command where she was told not to read novels until she was married. Instead, Wharton read the classics, philosophy, history, and poetry including Daniel Defoe, John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Jean Racine, Thomas Moore, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, John Ruskin, and Washington Irving. Biographer Hermione Lee describes Wharton as having read herself "out of Old New York".