Trade Paperback - NEW
In a beautiful new Vintage Classics package: one of Wharton's most famous novels--the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize--exquisitely details a tragic struggle between love and responsibility in Gilded Age New York.
Newland Archer, a young, aristocratic lawyer, is engaged to the cloistered, beautiful May Welland. But when May's cousin Ellen arrives from Europe, fleeing her failed marriage to a Polish count, her worldly and independent nature intrigues Archer. Trapped by his passionless relationship with May and the social conventions that forbid a relationship with the disgraced Ellen, Archer finds himself torn between possibility and duty. Wharton's profound understanding of her characters' lives makes the triangle of Archer, May, and Ellen come to life with an irresistible urgency. A wry, incisive look at the ways in which desire and emotion must negotiate the complex rules of society, The Age of Innocence is one of Wharton's most moving works.
