The Age of Innocence

Summary

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Edith Wharton brings the glamorous Gilded Age to life in this acclaimed 1920 novel. Distinguished heir Newland Archer is happily engaged to proper society darling May Welland–until the day he meets her cousin, the scandalous and bold (and married) Countess Ellen Olenska. Suddenly, his carefully planned future feels restrictive and stale. Ellen represents possibilities Newland has never before imagined, but is he already too entrenched in New York society to take such a leap? Tradition, progress, and obligation vibrate with tension in the book that established Wharton as the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize.