Functions in the textwrap module works with multiline text except a newly added (in issue18585) the shorten() function. Wrapping and shortening a multiline text using existing textwrap function is not a trivial job.

I propose to add two new parameters to the TextWrap class and wrap() and fill() functions: max_lines and placeholder. If the max_lines argument is specified then wrapped text truncated to max_lines and the last line shortened to the width argument.

>>>print(textwrap('Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.', width=40, max_lines=3))
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt ut labore et dolore (...)

The shorten() function then will be just a particular case of fill() with max_lines=1.