The Touchstone is a novella, written by Edith Wharton in 1900; it was the first of her many stories describing life in old New York. Stephen Glennard, the novella's protagonist, is suddenly impoverished and unable to marry the woman he loves.
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.