The Touchstone is a novella written by Edith Wharton. It was published in 1900 and was her first published novella. Stephen Glennard betrays a former love, selling her letters to him so that he may raise the money to marry his beautiful fiancee.

Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862–August 11, 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.