The Age of Innocence

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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Published: 01/01/1996
ISBN: 9780553214505
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.36lbs
Size: 7.00h x 4.24w x 0.73d
Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 10826 / Age of Innocence
Reading Level: 8.8 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 19