Edith Wharton died of a stroke at Pavillon Colombe, her home near Paris, France, aged 75.
Edith Wharton died on August 11, 1937, of a stroke at her home, Pavillon Colombe, in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, near Paris, France, at the age of 75. Her death came roughly two months after suffering a heart attack at the same residence, marking the end of one of the most distinguished literary careers of the early twentieth century.
By the time of her death, Wharton had authored more than 40 books over four decades, including celebrated novels such as The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence, along with numerous short stories, works of design and architectural criticism, travel writing, poetry, and an acclaimed autobiography, A Backward Glance (1934). She had become the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1921) and had received numerous other honors, including an honorary doctorate from Yale University and election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Wharton was buried in the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles, France, near her lifelong friend Walter Berry. Her death marked the passing of a writer who had chronicled, with unmatched precision and irony, the vanishing world of old New York aristocracy and the broader tensions between individual desire and social convention. Her literary legacy continued to grow after her death, with her novels remaining staples of American literature curricula, and her keen social criticism and psychological insight securing her a permanent place among the foremost American novelists of any era.