a book
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 2004 · 384 pages
Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure. This edition features an introduction by award-winning novelist, Rachel Cusk.
Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence, is both a poignant story of frustrated love and an extraordinarily vivid, delightfully satirical record of a vanished world.
As the scion of one of New York’s leading families, Newland Archer has been born into a life of sumptuous privilege and strict duty. But the arrival of the Countess Olenska, a free spirit who breathes clouds of European sophistication, makes him question the path on which his upbringing has set him. As his fascination with her grows, he discovers just how hard it is to escape the bonds of the society that has shaped him.
recommended by 7 people
sourced from public statements
Roxane Gay
“This is such an elegant novel. I love how Wharton finely details the lives of the New York wealthy, their intrigues, the ways they interact, the ways they indulge and deny themselves. And at the heart of it, passionate, unrequited love, and the quieter, more reserved love borne of duty. I’ll always love this book.”↗
Margaret Atwood
“"Somewhat comforting stories: Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls; Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence. For love stories that work out, you can't beat Jane Austen."”↗
Lionel Shriver
“Edith Wharton’s prose style is lucid, intelligent and artful rather than arty; she’s eloquent but never fussy, and always clear. A friend of Henry James, Wharton never seems to be writing well to show off. This poignant story, set in upper-class New York in the 1870s, illustrates the bind for women — the choice is a demeaning if relaxing servitude and a dignified if frightening independence. Should one follow desire or the demands of morality? The novel is romantic and frankly heartbreaking, but I’m a sucker for unhappy endings.”↗
