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The Age of Innocence

By Edith Wharton
Introduction by Regina Barreca
Afterword by Judith P. Saunders

By Edith Wharton
Introduction by Regina Barreca
Afterword by Judith P. Saunders

By Edith Wharton
Introduction by Regina Barreca
Afterword by Judith P. Saunders

By Edith Wharton
Introduction by Regina Barreca
Afterword by Judith P. Saunders

Best Seller
Mass Market Paperback $5.95

Mar 04, 2008 | ISBN 9780451530882

Ebook $4.99

Mar 04, 2008 | ISBN 9781440635687

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    The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
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    About The Age of Innocence

    Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a book written by a woman, The Age of Innocence is a suspenseful, deeply moving, and brilliantly accomplished novel of the struggle between desire and destiny.

    In the polished works of Edith Wharton, Old New York is a society at once infinitely sophisticated and ruthlessly primitive, in which adherence to ritual and loyalty to clan surpass all other values—and transgression is always punished.

    The Age of Innocence is Wharton’s 1920 novel of love menaced by convention, played out against a gorgeously arrayed backdrop of opera houses, lavish dinner parties, country homes, and luxurious deathbeds. The young lawyer Newland Archer believes that he must make an impossible choice: domesticity with his docile and lovely fiancée, May Welland, or passion with her highly unsuitable but irresistible cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska. What Newland does not suspect—but will learn—is that the women also hold cards in this game…

    About The Age of Innocence

    Edith Wharton’s masterpiece brings to life the grandeur and hypocrisy of a gilded age. Set among the very rich in 1870s New York, it tells the story of Newland Archer, a young lawyer engaged to marry virginal socialite May Welland, when he meets her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, a woman unbound by convention and surrounded by scandal. As all three are drawn into a love triangle filled with sensuality, subtlety, and betrayal, Archer faces a harrowing choice between happiness and the social code that has ruled his life. The resulting tale of thwarted love is filled with irony and surprise, struggle and acceptance. Recipient of the first Pulitzer Prize for fiction ever awarded to a woman, this great novel paints a timeless portrait of “society” still unmatched in American literature—an arbitrary, capricious social elite that professes inviolable standards but readily abandons them for greed and desire.

    Read An Excerpt

    Reading Guide

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    Reading Guide

    Also by Edith Wharton

    The Custom of the Country
    The Age of Innocence
    The House of Mirth
    Ethan Frome
    The Age of Innocence
    See all books by Edith Wharton

    Also by Edith Wharton

    The Custom of the Country
    The Age of Innocence
    The House of Mirth
    Ethan Frome
    The Age of Innocence
    See all books by Edith Wharton

    About Edith Wharton

    The upper stratum of New York society into which Edith Wharton was born in 1862 provided her with an abundance of material as a novelist but did not encourage her growth as an artist. Educated by tutors and governesses, she… More about Edith Wharton

    About Edith Wharton

    The upper stratum of New York society into which Edith Wharton was born in 1862 provided her with an abundance of material as a novelist but did not encourage her growth as an artist. Educated by tutors and governesses, she… More about Edith Wharton

    Product Details

    Category: Fiction Classics | Historical Romance | Regency Romance | Literary Fiction

    Mass Market Paperback | $5.95
    Published by Signet
    Mar 04, 2008 | 336 Pages | 4-3/16 x 6-3/4 | ISBN 9780451530882

    Category: Fiction Classics | Historical Romance | Regency Romance | Literary Fiction

    Ebook | $4.99
    Published by Signet
    Mar 04, 2008 | 336 Pages | ISBN 9781440635687
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    Praise

    Praise for Edith Wharton and The Age of Innocence

    “Is it—in this world—vulgar to ask for more? To entreat a little wildness, a dark place or two in the soul?”—Katherine Mansfield

    “There is no woman in American literature as fascinating as the doomed Madame Olenska….Traditionally, Henry James has always been placed slightly higher up the slope of Parnassus than Edith Wharton. But now that the prejudice against the female writer is on the wane, they look to be exactly what they are: giants, equals, the tutelary and benign gods of our American literature.”—Gore Vidal

    “Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security and alertness which characterizes Mrs. Wharton and her tradition?”—E. M. Forster

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