Novel
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 1920
Synopsis
New York, in the early 1870s. Newland Archer, a young lawyer from a good family, becomes engaged to May Welland, an irreproachable young woman, just as Ellen Olenska, May's cousin, appears at the opera in the family box, back from Europe after leaving a brutal Polish count. Society declines the dinner given in her honour, and the family calls on its most influential relatives for help. When Ellen wants to seek a divorce, Archer's firm instructs him to talk her out of it, and he sees her more and more often.
Context
The novel was begun in September 1919, shortly after the author settled near Paris, and finished in the spring of 1920; her sister-in-law helped her to reconstruct the period. It appeared in four instalments in Pictorial Review, from July to October 1920, then in volume from Appleton. The 1921 Pulitzer Prize was awarded to it against the advice of the jury, which wanted a novel by Sinclair Lewis, by the board of Columbia University, which gave no reasons. Three films have been made from it, including Martin Scorsese's in 1993.
Who it is for
A novel of about three hundred and sixty pages, with a constant irony that is never underlined. Translated into French as early as 1921 by Madeleine Taillandier, then by Sarah Fosse in 2019.
Prizes and reception
Pulitzer Prize 1921, the first awarded to a woman, and one of the most widely read novels by its author.
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