The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by Edith Wharton which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize.

 "It is one of the best novels of the twentieth century and ... a permanent addition to literature." -- New York Times Book Review, October 17, 1920

The novel takes place among New York City's upper class during the 1870s, before the advent of electric lights, telephones or motor vehicles; when there was a small cluster of aristocratic "old revolutionary stock" families that ruled New York's social life; when "being things" was better than "doing things" - one's occupation or abilities were secondary to heredity and family connections, when reputation and outward appearances came at the exclusion of everything and everyone else, and when 5th Avenue was so deserted by nightfall that it was possible to follow the comings and goings of society by watching who went to which household.

First published in four parts during July to October 1920 in "The Pictorial Review" and then in the same year by D. Appleton and Company in New York and in London.

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Download the eBook (Pdf, 570KB, Penn State University)

Useful Links:

• The Age of Innocence, available freely at Project Gutenberg.
• CliffNotes
• GradeSaver ClassicNotes Study Guide written by Harvard students

Book Description:

Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Edith Wharton's classic novel The Age of Innocence reveals a society governed by the dictates of taste and form, manners and morals, and intricate social ceremonies. With amazing clarity and sensitivity, Edith Wharton re-creates an atmosphere in which subtle gestures and faint implications bespeak desire and emotion, in which beauty and innocence are valued above truth, and in which disturbing the social order disturbs the very foundations of one's identity.

Newland Archer, soon to marry the lovely May Welland, is a man torn between his respect for tradition and family and his attraction to May's strongly independent cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska. Plagued by the desire to live in a world where two people can love each other free from condemnation and judgment by the group, Newland views the artful delicacy of the world he lives in as a comforting security one moment, and at another, as an oppressive fiction masking true human nature.

The Age of Innocence is at once a richly drawn portrait of the elegant lifestyles, luxurious brownstones, and fascinating culture of bygone New York society and a compelling look at the conflict between human passions and the social tribe that tries to control them.

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature:

Novel by Edith Wharton, published in 1920. The work presents a picture of upper-class New York society in the late 19th century. The story is presented as a kind of anthropological study of this society through references to the families and their activities as tribal. In the story Newland Archer, though engaged to May Welland, a beautiful and proper fellow member of elite society, is attracted to Ellen Olenska, a former member of their circle who has been living in Europe but who has left her husband under mysterious circumstances and returned to her family's New York milieu. May prevails by subtly adhering to the conventions of that world. The novel was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

About the Author:

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was born into a distinguished New York family and was educated privately in the United States and abroad. Among her best-known work is Ethan Frome (1911), which is considered her greatest tragic story, The House of Mirth (1905), and The Age of Innocence (1920), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

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