The Age of Innocence [Mass Market Paperback]

Candace Waid's Norton Critical Edition of The Age of Innocence is a work of deep scholarship and sensitive attention to the interests of contemporary readers. It will be the indispensable guide for readers of Wharton's novel, brought to new life in this imposing edition. Professor Waid has reconstructed the cultural setting of the novel with amazingly abundant detail. The reach and pertinence of its historical sections, the selection of exciting new criticism and scholarship, and the editor's own learned, cogent, and engaging notes to the text itself all combine to make this volume a rousingly significant contribution to Wharton studies and to Gilded Age scholarship in general. --Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Gray Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies, Yale University --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Edith Wharton's novel reworks the eternal triangle of two women and a man in a strikingly original manner. When about to marry the beautiful and conventional May Welland, Newland Archer falls in love with her very unconventional cousin, the Countess Olenska. The consequent drama, set in New York during the 1870s, reveals terrifying chasms under the polished surface of upper-class society as the increasingly fraught Archer struggles with conflicting obligations and desires. The first woman to do so, Edith Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize for this dark comedy of manners which was immediately recognized as one of her greatest achievements. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14–18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A Norton Critical Edition. The editor, Candace Waid is an Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862, during the American Civil War. Wharton published her first short story in 1891; her first story collection, The Greater Inclination, in 1899; a novella called The Touchstone in 1900; and her first novel, a historical romance called The Valley of Decision, in 1902. The book that made Wharton famous was The House of Mirth, published in 1905. She died in 1937. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.