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The Age of Innocence

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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...

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3.9
Very Good
1715 Ratings

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Language
English
Publisher
Penguin
Released
2008
Format
Paperback
ISBN10
0451530888
ISBN13
9780451530882
First published
1920
Original title
The Age of Innocence
Rating
3.85 out of 5
Description
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...