{"product_id":"the-age-of-innocence","title":"The Age of Innocence","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFirst published in 1920, Edith Wharton’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Age of Innocence\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e returns to the ceremonious world of New York’s upper class in the 1870s, where family reputation and social convention govern even the most intimate decisions. Newland Archer, a cultivated young lawyer, is engaged to the beautiful and dutiful May Welland when May’s cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, returns from Europe, separated from her husband and unwilling to submit quietly to society’s judgement. Drawn to Ellen’s independence and the possibility of a less constrained life, Newland finds himself caught between desire and the obligations of the world that has shaped him. Wharton renders this conflict through dinners, opera boxes, family alliances and seemingly innocuous remarks, revealing the quiet force with which a society can police its own members.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBeneath its polished manners, the novel is a searching study of repression, complicity and the private sacrifices demanded by respectability. Wharton’s irony is never merely decorative: it exposes the distance between what her characters feel and what they can permit themselves to acknowledge, giving ordinary social rituals the tension of a psychological drama. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Age of Innocence\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e secured Wharton’s place among the foremost American novelists of her generation. Its portrait of a vanished social order is also an enduring meditation on the lives people might have lived, and on how convention can become so familiar that it is mistaken for innocence.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrom the book\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“We're all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the same folded paper.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e— Edith Wharton, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Age of Innocence\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Age of Innocence\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Wharton makes her characters’ inner lives the scenes of turbulent psychic action that is barely visible to the world.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e— Sam Jordison, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardner's EU","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64027468464458,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/thelamppostparis.com\/products\/the-age-of-innocence","provider":"The Lamp-Post Library \u0026 Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}