| The Age of Innocence Contributor(s): Wharton, Edith (Author), Barreca, Regina (Introduction by), Saunders, Judith P. (Afterword by) |
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ISBN: 0451530888 ISBN-13: 9780451530882 Publisher: Signet Book OUR PRICE: $7.16 Product Type: Mass Market Paperbound - Other Formats Published: March 2008 Annotation: Newland Archer and May Welland have just announced their engagement to New York society, and the match seems perfect -- until Archer meets Countess Olenska, a sharp, beautiful woman in the midst of a divorce . . . it's for good reason this book won Edith Wharton Pulitzer Prize. "Is it -- in this world -- vulgar to ask for more? To entreat a little wildness, a dark place or two in the soul?" "There is no woman in American literature as fascinating as the doomed Madame Olenska. . . . Traditionally, Henry James has always been placed slightly higher up the slope of Parnassus than Edith Wharton. But now that the prejudice against the female writer is on the wane, they look to be exactly what they are: giants, equals, the tutelary and benign gods of our American literature." "Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security and alertness which characterizes Mrs. Wharton and her tradition?"
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| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Classics |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2009291092 |
| Lexile Measure: 1170 |
| Physical Information: 0.91" H x 5.79" W x 6.79" (0.36 lbs) 316 pages |
| Accelerated Reader Info |
| Quiz #: 10826 Reading Level: 8.8 Interest Level: Upper Grades Point Value: 19.0 |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a book written by a woman, The Age of Innocence is a suspenseful, deeply moving, and brilliantly accomplished novel of the struggle between desire and destiny. In the polished works of Edith Wharton, Old New York is a society at once infinitely sophisticated and ruthlessly primitive, in which adherence to ritual and loyalty to clan surpass all other values--and transgression is always punished. The Age of Innocence is Wharton's 1920 novel of love menaced by convention, played out against a gorgeously arrayed backdrop of opera houses, lavish dinner parties, country homes, and luxurious deathbeds. The young lawyer Newland Archer believes that he must make an impossible choice: domesticity with his docile and lovely fianc e, May Welland, or passion with her highly unsuitable but irresistible cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska. What Newland does not suspect--but will learn--is that the women also hold cards in this game... |