"The Age of Innocence"

Author: Edith Wharton
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Publication Date: 2007-03-01
Features: Book Description Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles. "The Age of Innocence" is a satirical and sometimes dark comedy of manners which explores the "eternal triangle" of love, against the backdrop of upper-class New York society in the 1870s. Amazon.com Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes "The Age of Innocence" so indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old New York, and Newland Archer's impossible love for the disgraced Countess Olenska, is a perfectly wrought book about a raw when upper-class culture in this country was still a mixture of American and European extracts, and when "society" had rules as rigid as any in history. From AudioFile Welcome to the New York of the 1870s, where everyone in the upper crust fits into the mold or is ostracized for nonconformity. Despite having married the socially suitable May, Weland Archer wishes to be unconventional and sees the Countess Olenska as a role model at the same time that he falls in love with her. Wanda McCaddon is a perfect narrator for this book. Her voice is as cold and sharp as the society she reads about. Through her intonation and phrasing, a stifling Victorian mask drops over each character. As Wharton describes a society long ago, McCaddon brings it to life in a dry, droll, appropriately uncaptivating manner. M.B.K. The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature Novel by Edith Wharton, published in 1920. The work presents a picture of upper-class New York society in the late 19th century. The story is presented as a kind of anthropological study of this society through references to the families and their activities as tribes. In the story, Newland Archer, though engaged to May Welland, a beautiful and proper fellow member of elite society, is attracted to Ellen Olenska, a former member of their circle who has been living in Europe but who has left her husband under mysterious circumstances and returned to her family's New York milieu. May prevails by subtly adhering to the conventions of that world. The novel was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Book Dimension: length: (cm) 19.8 width: (cm) 12.6