Edith Wharton (1862—1937) was an American novelist and short story writer. Her works show the lives of people of the late nineteenth century, the times of decline in American history. She was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921. Wharton also was familiar with many famous people of the time, including President Theodore Roosevelt. Her first novel "The Valley of Decision" is set in eighteenth-century Italy. It follows a young man Odo Valsecca, who inherits a dukedom. During the French Revolution, he joins the rebel forces, and that decision brings the struggle as he must he must overcome the traditions of feudalism, to which he belongs.