US novelist. Her work, known for its subtlety and form and influenced by her friend Henry James, was mostly set in New York society. It includes The House of Mirth (1905), which made her reputation; the grim, uncharacteristic novel of New England Ethan Frome (1911); The Custom of the Country (1913); and The Age of Innocence (1920; Pulitzer Prize), which was made into a film in 1993.