In his Introduction, Louis Auchincloss calls the writing in A Backward Glance "as firm and crisp and lucid as in the best of her novels".Written in 1934, three years before her death, A Backward Glance is a vivid account of Wharton's public and private life.
Edith Wharton was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper class New York "aristocracy" to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.