The Age of Innocence
A tale of forbidden love and social constraint in 1870s New York high society, where duty and passion collide in the Gilded Age.
Listen on SWOO.About this book
The Age of Innocence, published in 1920, is Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece about the rigid social codes of New York's upper class in the 1870s.
Newland Archer, a wealthy lawyer engaged to the beautiful but conventional May Welland, finds his ordered world disrupted when he meets May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. Ellen, who has fled an unhappy marriage in Europe, represents everything unconventional and free that Newland secretly yearns for. As their attraction deepens, Newland must choose between passion and duty, between the woman he loves and the society that defines him.
Wharton's elegant prose and keen social observation create a devastating portrait of lives constrained by tradition and appearances. This ironic tale of lost possibilities remains a powerful exploration of love, duty, and the price of conformity.
