The Age of Innocence (Everyman's Library Classics, #202)
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The Age of Innocence, one of Edith Wharton’s most renowned novels and the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, exquisitely details the struggle between love and responsibility through the experiences of men and women in Gilded Age New York. The novel follows...
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(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The Age of Innocence, one of Edith Wharton’s most renowned novels and the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, exquisitely details the struggle between love and responsibility through the experiences of men and women in Gilded Age New York. The novel follows Newland Archer, a young, aristocratic lawyer engaged to the cloistered, beautiful May Welland. When May’s disgraced cousin Ellen arrives from Europe, fleeing her marriage to a Polish Count, her worldly, independent nature intrigues Archer, who soon falls in love with her. Trapped by his passionless relationship with May and the social conventions that forbid a relationship with Ellen, Archer finds himself torn between possibility and duty. Wharton’s profound understanding of her characters’ lives makes the triangle of Archer, May, and Ellen come to life with an irresistible urgency. A wry, incisive look at the ways in which love and emotion must negotiate the complex rules of high society, The Age of Innocence is one of Wharton's finest, most illuminative works. With an introduction by Peter Washington
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780307268204 (0307268209)
ASIN: 307268209
Publish date: February 5th 2008
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Pages no: 352
Edition language: English
In the course of reading "The Age of Innocence", I sometimes just forgot that it plays in the late 19th century, because its plot and main characters somehow seem to fit contemporary views just like they would 19th-century morals. I truly enjoyed Edith Wharton's novel and ironic style of writing.
I knew this book was a classic, but not that it was a romance. I went in not knowing what to expect and came out liking the book in general; however, it was difficult for me at times. First, I had no idea how snooty and shallow New York society was at the turn of the 20th century. I can understand...
The Age of Innocence is the third book in Wharton's loosely-linked cycle focused on upper class New York of the 1870's (the other two books are The House of Mirth, published in 1905, and The Custom of the Country, published in 1913). She's writing from a distance, looking backward between 30 and 50 ...
Newland Archer was a quiet and self-controlled young man. Conformity to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second nature. Until the arrival of Countess Olenska. The novel takes place in the late nineteenth century where the American gilded age was developing in the New York...
Scorsese's version of this book is, in my opinion, one of his very best films and on the short list of films I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand good direction. This despite Michelle Pfeiffer's supposedly miscast as the female lead. Perhaps my love for the film version is what made me ...
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 by Edith Wharton, Peter Washington, now listed on BookLikes)