The Age of Innocence (1920) is a novel by Edith Wharton, which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The story occurs among New York City's upper class in the 1870s, before electricity, telephone, and automobiles; when there was a small cluster of old, "aristocratic" Revolutionary War-stock families who ruled New York's social life; when being was better than doing; when occupation and abilities were secondary to blood connections (heredity and family); when reputation and appearances excluded everything and everyone not of one's caste; and when Fifth Avenue was so deserted by nightfall that it was possible to follow Society's comings and goings, by spying who went to what house.
In 1920, The Age of Innocence was published twice; first in four parts, July–October, in the Pictorial Review magazine, and then by D. Appleton and Company as a book in New York and in London.
The Age of Innocence centers on one society couple's impending marriage and the introduction of a scandalized woman whose...
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