New York, 1872. Newland Archer is the perfect gentleman, engaged to the perfect girl, gliding through the perfect world of opera boxes and ballrooms. Then Countess Ellen Olenska returns from Europe, trailing scandal and the faint scent of freedom, and his flawless life shatters like crystal on marble. The first novel by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is no costume drama — it is a razor-sharp dissection of a society that devours those who dare to feel too deeply. Wharton writes what Austen could not: the cost of choosing safety over passion, and the exquisite, lifelong ache of the road not taken.
