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The Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Edith Wharton
Creator: Maureen Howard
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $4.95
Buy New: $1.85
You Save: $3.10 (63%)
New (29) Used (26) Collectible (3) from $1.85
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 39672
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 1593080743
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9781593080747
ASIN: 1593080743
Publication Date: January 16, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: GREAT BUY!Brand New From US Distributor! WE ARE A 5 STAR SELLER with OVER 3,500,000 BOOKS SOLD!!! OVER ~ 675,000 FEEDBACKS ~ POSTED!!!
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Product Description
Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.”
This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.
Maureen Howard is a critic, teacher, and writer of fiction. Her seven novels include Bridgeport Bus, Natural History, and A Lover’s Almanac. Her memoir, Facts of Life, won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. She has taught at Yale and Columbia University.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 No one does New York high society better than Wharton December 27, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
"It was the old New York way of taking life "with effusion of blood"; the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except the behavior of those who gave rise to them."
I do like the way Wharton cuts to the chase and gets to the underbelly of the of 19C New York's hypocritical society. Set in New York's golden age, Wharton tells the story of Newland Archer, who has just announced his engagement to May Welland, although the arrival of May's cousin Countess Ellen Olenska on the heels of a disastrous marriage throws Newland for a loop. Newland and Ellen fight their attraction as he settles down to married life and proper society with May, until finally culminating in a very enigmatic ending to the love story.
Wharton, born Edith Newbald Jones, was born and raised in the high society that she writes about and my understanding is that the old phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" came from the rest of the upper crust trying to keep up with Wharton's family. As much as I enjoyed this, I didn't find it anywhere near as engaging and readable as The House of Mirth, although she is brilliant as always in displaying the foibles, weaknesses and flat out hypocrisy of New York society in the late 19C. This is a very subtle book with a story that unfolds slowly and one to savor slowly - if you're looking for a fast paced, page turning read look elsewhere.
 An All Time Great November 23, 2008
This is a book into which I can dip at any moment. The characters are drawn so clearly that they do not disappear into stereotype but instead are constantly surprising the reader with nuances no matter the number of reads.
Newland Archer is the prototype of a man caught between the world of his head and the world of his heart. While he is drawn to Countess Olenska, he is too aware of the consequences of following that attraction. The true wonder of this book is the subtle characterization of May Welland, the innocent cast between the star-crossed lovers. Both rigid in her adherence to the rules of her class and blind to subterfuge around her, the revelation of her depths, her understanding and her compassion offer the reader a full picture of how love, in its many forms, shapes lives.
The writing is exemplary. Both properly archaic and achingly familiar, it draws in the reader, pulling back the curtains on a world so immersed in duty and tradtion and secrecy as to make the reader feel a part of the structure.
I read it periodically, enjoying the pacing, the language and the heartbreak a million times over.
A Classical Tale of New York Society October 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Newland Archer has a problem: he is married to one woman and in love with another. No, that is not his problem. If he were living in modern day America the couple would file for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences," and get on with their lives. But in Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence, Newland lives in New York City in the 1880s and 1890s and is a member of the upper crust of New York society where divorce is not acceptable. Indeed, the rules of this culture are firm and minute, as for example the stricture against entering a box at the opera during a solo.
The novel begins with the return of Countess Olenska, the former Ellen Mingott, who left New York society behind at an early age when she moved to Europe with her aunt. She then married Count Olenska who is described as a brutish person who takes her inheritance (legally as her husband). Ellen leaves him and returns to New York to what she hopes will be the bosom of her family. The response is mixed since a woman is supposed, by cultural standards, to remain with her husband despite any circumstances. Ellen is also given to other behaviors that are contrary to the accepted norm.
At this point in the story Newland becomes engaged to May Welland, a beautiful young woman who is also a member of this society. But as Newland and Ellen interact they become conscious of their love for each other. Archer works (after a fashion) as an attorney for a law firm that primarily serves these families and is asked to persuade Ellen from filing for divorce from Count Olenska, which she finally agrees to do. May and Newland get married and the Countess continues to live in the United States but moves about rather than live in close proximity to Archer. As time goes by they meet on various occasions, always in tense, dramatic fashion. Finally the matriarch of the group, Mrs. Manson Miggot, agrees to provide Ellen with a substantial allowance and Ellen decides to return to Europe, but to remain independent of her husband. Newland is gladdened by this news because he has determined to leave his wife (damn the consequences!) to be with Ellen. The book then reaches it climax with Edith Wharton ultimately saying that one cannot successfully flaunt society's rules. On the other hand, Wharton's sympathies are clearly with Ellen as she is portrayed most favorably throughout the novel.
The Age of Innocence is worth reading as a glimpse into a world most people will never enter. Wharton is particularly well qualified to write about this world as she was a member of high New York society herself. For some people, including myself, this world is shallow and meaningless and the characters in the story frivolous and for the most part uninteresting. In a world where more than one billion people subsist each day on less than a dollar it is hard for me to find sympathy for people whose biggest problem is adhering to a set of rules that have little meaning beyond their circle.
Love, Loneliness and the Strictures of Society. August 27, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Imagine living in a world where life is governed by intricate rituals; a world "balanced so precariously that its harmony [can] be shattered by a whisper" (Wharton); a world ruled by self-declared experts on form, propriety and family history - read: scandal -; where everything is labeled and yet, people are not; where in order not to disturb society's smooth surface nothing is ever expressed or even thought of directly, and where communication occurs almost exclusively by way of symbols, which are unknown to the outsider and, like any secret code, by their very encryption guarantee his or her permanent exclusion.
Such, in faithful imitation of Victorian England, was the society of late 19th century upper class New York. Into this society returns, after having grown up and lived all her adult life in Europe, American-born Countess Ellen Olenska, after leaving a cruel and uncaring husband. She already causes scandal by the mere manner of her return; but not knowing the secret rituals of the society she has entered, she quickly brings herself further into disrepute by receiving an unmarried man, by being seen in the company of a man only tolerated by virtue of his financial success and his marriage to the daughter of one of this society's most respected families, by arriving late to a dinner in which she has expressly been included to rectify a prior general snub, by leaving a drawing room conversation to instead join a gentleman sitting by himself - and worst of all, by openly contemplating divorce, which will most certainly open up a whole Pandora's box of "oddities" and "unpleasantness:" the strongest terms ever used to express moral disapproval in this particular social context. Soon Ellen, who hasn't seen such facades even in her husband's household, finds herself isolated and, wondering whether noone is ever interested in the truth, complains bitterly that "[t]he real loneliness here is living among all these kind people who only ask you to pretend."
Ellen finds a kindred soul in attorney Newland Archer, her cousin May Welland's fiance, who secretly toys with a more liberal stance, while outwardly endorsing the value system of the society he lives in. Newland and Ellen fall in love - although not before he has advised her, on his employer's and May and Ellen's family's mandate, not to pursue her plans of divorce. As a result, Ellen becomes unreachable to him, and he flees into accelerating his wedding plans with May, who before he met Ellen in his eyes stood for everything that was good and noble about their society, whereas now he begins to see her as a shell whose interior he is reluctant to explore for fear of finding merely a kind of serene emptiness there; a woman whose seemingly dull, passive innocence grinds down every bit of roughness he wants to maintain about himself and who, as he realizes even before marrying her, will likely bury him alive under his own future. Then his passion for Ellen is rekindled by a meeting a year and a half after his wedding, and an emotional conflict they could hardly bear when he was not yet married escalates even further. And only when it is too late for all three of them he finds out that his wife had far more insight (and almost ruthless cleverness) than he had ever credited her with.
Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize and the first work of fiction written by a woman to be awarded that distinction, "The Age of Innocence" is one of Edith Wharton's most enduringly popular novels; the crown jewel among her subtly satirical descriptions of New York upper class society. By far not as overtly condemning and cynical as the earlier "House of Mirth" (for which Wharton reportedly even saw this later work as a sort of apology), "The Age of Innocence" is a masterpiece of characterization and social study alike: an intricate canvas painted by a master storyteller who knew the society which she described inside out, and who, even though she had moved to France (where she would continue living for the rest of her life) almost a decade earlier, was able to delineate late 19th century New York society's every nuance in pitch-perfect detail, while at the same time - seemingly without any effort at all - also blending together all these minute details into an impeccably composed ensemble that will stay with the reader long after he has turned the last page.
Also recommended:
Wharton: Four Novels (Library of America College Editions)
Edith Wharton: Vol 1. Collected Stories:1891-1910 (Library of America)
Edith Wharton: Vol.2 Collected Stories 1911-1937 (Library of America)
Henry James : Novels 1881-1886: Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians (Library of America)
Henry James: Novels 1901-1902: The Sacred Fount / The Wings of the Dove (Library of America)
Ethan Frome
The House of Mirth
Washington Square
The Portrait of a Lady
The Wings of the Dove
Relates to today August 6, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Even given the time in which it was written, Innocence still has relevance today. I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy the book, but it is described as a classic and I'll give any book a try. To my surprise I enjoyed the book immensely. I did struggle with terminology that is no longer used today, but the over all themes of love and choosing between happiness and obligations/responsibility/public appearance are ones we can relate to in the present. For people today it may not necessarily be choosing between two women/men, but rather love and career and the resentment you might feel over choosing one over the other.
The book can make readers feel anger, but also understanding towards the male character. I would hope I would be my spouses Olenska and not his May.
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