Newland Archer, a wealthy young man in 1870s New York City, is engaged to the beautiful, seemingly conventional May Welland. And then the beautiful, decidedly unconventional Ellen Olenska, May’s cousin, returns from Europe. So begins The Age of Innocence.
“Yes; it’s good. But of course you and I are the only people who will ever read it,” said Wharton’s friend, Walter Berry, who felt it evoked a time and place only he and Edith remembered. It is good, and of course became a bestseller that made Edith Wharton the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It has been widely read ever since, translated into multiple languages including French, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, and Japanese.
In 2020, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of The Age of Innocence, we created our first online exhibit, Writing The Age of Innocence.
Published in October 1920