num_pages: 384
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.
language: English
title: The Age of Innocence
titlecomplete: The Age of Innocence
characters: Ellen Olenska, Newland Archer, Mrs. Augusta Welland, Mrs. Manson Mingott, May Welland
genres: Classics, American, New York, Historical, Novels, Romance, Historical Fiction, Literature, 20th Century, Fiction
ratings_count: 168136
places: The United States of America, New York City, New York, New York (State)
awards: awardedAt: -1546272000000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Novel
publisher: Scribner Paper Fiction