In 1914, Wharton urged America to join the war and carried on numerous efforts to help those in need. She founded the American Hostels for Refugees and the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee. Engaging in fund raising and visiting military hospitals, she also helped refugees coming into Paris after the battles of Marne and Ypres, finding them shelter, jobs, and food. She wrote The Book of the Homeless, asking for contributions from writers and artists, and giving the proceeds for war relief. For all these charitable deeds, she was decorated by the French Legion of Honor. In 1918, Wharton bought Villa Jean-Marie near Paris, naming it Pavillon Colombe. She divided her later years between this home and a chateau in the south of France, which was near Hyeres and named Chateau Sainte-Claire. Novels that came out of her war experiences include The Marne (1918), French Ways and Their Meaning (1919), and Sons at the Front (1923). The middle book was an attempt to explain French attitudes to Americans, as she had seen Americans come to Paris after the war and their actions were distasteful to her. As time went by, this abhorrence of American excess was replaced by a feeling that even the narrow-minded social code of 1870s New Yorkers had something noble about its ability to pass on civilized values.
Meanwhile, she was becoming famous as an American woman of letters and she was awarded several prizes during these years. In 1920, The Age of Innocence was published, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921.Two years later, Wharton came to America for the last time to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale. In 1924, she was awarded the Gold Medal by the National Institute of Arts and letters, the first woman so honored. Over the next five years, she published several important works, including The Writing of Fiction in 1925, which discussed many contemporary writers' works and also elaborated on her own methods of writing. The Age of Innocence was adapted for the stage and opened at the Empire Theatre in New York on November 27, playing 207 performances. Also during this time, her friend Walter Berry and her ex-husband, Teddy, died. From 1920 to 1933, Wharton spent a great deal of time among authors and artistic circles in Paris. She published her autobiography, A Backward Glance, in 1934, which described the pleasures of her childhood, her early years as an author, and her friends and travels. In 1935, she suffered a slight stroke, but the following year she was writing again and published The World Over. In 1937, while visiting Ogden Codman's chateau, she suffered another stroke and died on August 11. She was buried in Cimitiere des Gonards in Versailles near Walter Berry. Posthumously, her novel The Buccaneers was published, completed by Marion Mainwaring. Wharton had begun it in 1934, and it was similar in theme to The Custom of the Country, concerning nouveau riche New Yorkers whose daughters go to Europe to seek out aristocratic European titles.
