num_pages: 320
description: 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.
language: English
title: The Age of Innocence
titlecomplete: The Age of Innocence
characters: Mrs. Manson Mingott, Ellen Olenska, Mrs. Augusta Welland, Newland Archer, May Welland
genres: 20th Century, American, New York, Historical Fiction, Historical, Novels, Literature, Classics, Romance, Fiction
ratings_count: 168117
places: New York City, New York, The United States of America, New York (State)
awards: awardedAt: -1546272000000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Novel
publisher: Bantam Classic