The Age of Innocence

Earning Wharton the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a woman, The Age of Innocence is a powerful novel that explores the constraints imposed on love and marriage in nineteenth century high society. It tells the story of Newland Archer, a New York socialite whose impending marriage and infatuation with his fiancé s European cousin causes him to become disillusioned with society and its myriad affectations. A powerful rumination on love and loss, The Age of Innocence remains a compelling and relatable novel even today.

Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes The Age of Innocence so indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old New York, and Newland Archer's impossible love for the disgraced Countess Olenska, is a perfectly wrought book about an era when upper-class culture in this country was still a mixture of American and European extracts, and when "society" had rules as rigid as any in history.