The Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton (Macmillan Collector's Library, 194)

by Edith Wharton (Author), Rachel Cusk (Introduction)

New
Hardcover
2019
$11.94

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much-loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence, is both a poignant story of frustrated love and an extraordinarily vivid, delightfully satirical record of a vanished world. This edition features an introduction by award-winning novelist, Rachel Cusk.
As the scion of one of New York's leading families, Newland Archer has been born into a life of sumptuous privilege and strict duty. A sensitive, intelligent young man, he still respects the rigid social code by which his class lives. As he contemplates his forthcoming marriage to the striking and equally well-born May Welland, he gives thanks that she is `one of his own kind'. But the arrival of the Countess Olenska, a free spirit who breathes clouds of European sophistication, makes him question the path on which his upbringing has set him. As his fascination with her grows, he discovers just how hard it is to escape the bonds of the society that has shaped him.

Synopsis

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much-loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence, is both a poignant story of frustrated love and an extraordinarily vivid, delightfully satirical record of a vanished world. This edition features an introduction by award-winning novelist, Rachel Cusk.

As the scion of one of New York's leading families, Newland Archer has been born into a life of sumptuous privilege and strict duty. A sensitive, intelligent young man, he still respects the rigid social code by which his class lives. As he contemplates his forthcoming marriage to the striking and equally well-born May Welland, he gives thanks that she is `one of his own kind'. But the arrival of the Countess Olenska, a free spirit who breathes clouds of European sophistication, makes him question the path on which his upbringing has set him. As his fascination with her grows, he discovers just how hard it is to escape the bonds of the society that has shaped him.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Edition: Main Market
Publisher: Macmillan Collector's Library
Published: 02 May 2019
ISBN 10: 1509890033
ISBN 13: 9781509890033

Media Reviews

A great city's greatest novelist . . . Wharton's late masterpiece stands as a fierce indictment of a society estranged from culture and in desperate need of a European sensibility -- Robert McCrum * Guardian *
It's a deliciously hard-edged satire of manners and customs . . . Wharton was not only ferociously witty and morally committed, she was also a great storyteller -- Vincent Canby * New York Times *
The Age of Innocence has as much in common with that popular Oprah-ish romance-rooted literary fashion as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet does -- Patrick T. Reardon
Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security and alertness which characterizes Mrs Wharton and her tradition? -- E. M. Forster
Lucid, intelligent, and artful rather than arty; she is eloquent but never fussy, and always clear. She never seems to be writing well to show off -- Lionel Shriver

Author Bio

Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite `Teddy' Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.