The Age of Innocence (Royal Collector's Edition) (Case Laminate Hardcover with Jacket)

by Edith Wharton

Overview

Newland Archer is a young, popular, successful lawyer living in an elegant New York City house. His engagement to May Welland is one in a string of accomplishments. His life changes when he meets Countess Ellen Olenska. Through his relationship with her, he begins questioning the values on which he was raised. He sees the sexual inequality of New York society and the shallowness of its customs, and struggles to balance social commitment to May with love for Ellen.

The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s New York society, it never develops into an outright condemnation of the institution. The novel is noted for Wharton's attention to detail and its accurate portrayal of how the 19^th-century East Coast American upper class lived, and the social tragedy of its plot. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s, after she had established herself as a strong author with publishers clamoring for her work.

This case laminate collector's edition includes a Victorian inspired dust-jacket.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781774762516
Publisher:	Royal Classics
Publication date:	02/16/2021
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 - August 11, 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt. Despite not publishing her first novel until she was forty, Wharton became an extraordinarily productive writer. In addition to her fifteen novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories, she published poetry, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, and a memoir. Wharton first began inventing stories when she was six. She would walk around the living room holding a book while reciting her story. In 1873, Wharton wrote a short story and gave it to her mother to read. Her mother criticized the story, so Wharton decided to just write poetry. While she constantly sought her mother's approval and love, it was rare that she received either. From the start, the relationship with her mother was a troubled one. In her youth, she wrote about society. Her central themes came from her experiences with her parents. She was very critical of her own work and would write public reviews criticizing it. She also wrote about her own experiences with life. Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by a subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class, late-nineteenth-century society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics, in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.

Date of Birth:

January 24, 1862

Date of Death:

August 11, 1937

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France

Education:

Educated privately in New York and Europe