The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton's Pullitzer prize-winning novel The Age of Innocence (1920) is a portrayal of New York's upper class society during the 1870s. Newland Archer is a wealthy socialite who's poised to marry May Welland, a perfectly pure and faultlessly suitable mate. When Archer meets May's scandalous cousin, Countess Olenska, whose unconventional views and shady past make her unique, his good intentions waver. The Countess by comparison casts May as a dull and manufactured product of New York's stifled upper-class. What results is a subtle and well-wrought drama that has been read and loved for nearly a century.
Wharton, whose other works are more harshly critical of society, wrote The Age of Innocence with far more humor and empathy, such that it's become an enduring classic. The book is also widely revered for the accuracy with which it portrays 19th-century American East Coast upper class: for all of these literary feats she won the Pulitzer Prize a year after its publication - the fist woman to do so. And in 1998 the Modern Library ranked The Age of Innocence 58th out of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
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