When World War I broke out in 1914, Edith Wharton’s initial response was less as a storyteller in search of material than as a citizen and intrepid witness.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The House of Mirth,” “The Custom of the Country” and other probing stories of New York society was living in Paris at the time and soon set out to help those imperiled by the clash between Allied and German forces. She set up a workroom for seamstresses and others who had lost their jobs, established hostels that aided thousands of refugees, and even reported from the trenches for a series of dispatches that ran in the American periodical Scribner’s Magazine.
But Wharton eventually — and inevitably — channeled her observations and experiences into fiction. She worked on a novel published after the war, “A Son at the Front,” and attempted a story about an affluent couple in
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