num_pages: 364
description: Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes The Age of Innocence  so indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old New York, and Newland Archer's impossible love for the disgraced Countess Olenska, is a perfectly wrought book about an era when upper-class culture in this country was still a mixture of American and European extracts, and when "society" had rules as rigid as any in history.
title: The Age of Innocence
titlecomplete: The Age of Innocence
characters: May Welland, Mrs. Manson Mingott, Mrs. Augusta Welland, Ellen Olenska, Newland Archer
genres: Fiction, 20th Century, Classics, Historical, New York, American, Historical Fiction, Romance, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 168102
places: New York City, New York, New York (State), The United States of America
awards: awardedAt: -1546272000000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Novel
publisher: Classic Publishers