The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton is part of our Contemporary & Literary Fiction book collection. Browse this title alongside contemporary novels and character-focused literary fiction.
About this book
This category offers a starting point for readers interested in character, relationships, and the ideas fiction can raise about human experience. The details of the setting and the characters' decisions can provide useful ways into the story.
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In Edith Wharton�s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence, adapted by Coco Rousseau, the handsome, wealthy Newland Archer, a member of New York�s upper class, is caught in a web of a love triangle - not one he falls into, but one he creates. Is it the fair and innocent but superficial May Newland, his betrothed, who can bring Newland the happiness, love, and passion he craves?
Or will a desperate Newland Archer disregard the rigid, sterile views of high society and abandon May for another - May�s cousin, the beautiful and mysterious Countess Olenska, a married woman who brings scandal wherever she treads?
Let intrigue, passion, and lust be your guides as you experience the once hidden, but now openly sensual story of The Age of Innocence.
Sensuality Level: Sensual
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About Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was an influential American novelist, short-story writer, and designer whose literary works offer a penetrating examination of wealth, social class, marriage, morality, and the restrictions imposed by respectable society. Celebrated for her sharp psychological insight, elegant prose, and subtle irony, Wharton explored the private struggles of individuals caught between personal desires and rigid social expectations. Her novels often focus on privileged communities where reputation and financial security can determine a person's future, revealing the emotional costs of conformity and the hidden conflicts beneath polished manners. Best known for The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, and Ethan Frome, she remains an important figure in American literature. Readers searching for Edith Wharton books will discover sophisticated fiction that examines human relationships, social ambition, gender expectations, and the complicated consequences of choosing between personal happiness and public approval.
Early Life and Literary Background
Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862, in New York City, into a wealthy family whose social environment helped shape her understanding of elite American society. She received a broad education through private instruction and developed an early interest in reading and writing. Her experiences within affluent social circles later provided material for novels that scrutinize the rules, rituals, and expectations governing upper-class life. Wharton also developed a strong interest in architecture and interior design, publishing influential work on domestic design before establishing herself as a major novelist. Her understanding of houses, landscapes, and social environments became an important feature of her fiction, where physical surroundings often reflect the values and limitations of the characters who inhabit them. Her literary career developed during a period of major social change, allowing her to examine tensions between inherited traditions and emerging ideas about independence and individual fulfillment.
The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth
The Age of Innocence, published in 1920, is one of Edith Wharton's most celebrated novels and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921. Set among New York's wealthy elite in the nineteenth century, the story follows Newland Archer, a man engaged to May Welland whose life becomes complicated by the arrival of May's unconventional cousin, Ellen Olenska. Through their relationships, Wharton explores desire, duty, reputation, and the pressure to conform to social expectations. The House of Mirth, published in 1905, offers another powerful examination of elite society through Lily Bart, a woman whose beauty and social connections cannot protect...Read More