2020 April The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

[Lesle, Appalachian Bibliophile]

The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It was her twelfth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize.

The Age of Innocence, which was set in the time of Wharton's childhood, was a softer and gentler work than The House of Mirth, which Wharton had published in 1905. In her autobiography, Wharton wrote of The Age of Innocence that it had allowed her to find "a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America... it was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914." Scholars and readers alike agree that The Age of Innocence is fundamentally a story which struggles to reconcile the old with the new. (293 pages)

[Georgina]

I’ll be reading this with you this month :)

[[deleted user]]

Almost finished. Have been reading Age of Innocence and House of Mirth simultaneously for some crazy reason. But I'm now a big Edith Wharton fan!

[Shannon]

I just happened to read The Age Of Innocence recently and just like Sam I am now a huge fan of Edith Wharton’s writing. I am currently reading Ethan Frome.

I may have to just start The House Of Mirth later this month.

[Georgina]

Wow Sam, you’re keen!
Do you think this is as good as House of Mirth?
And apologies, I got you’re name wrong in my previous post 😐 Do you ever have those days where you seem to not quite get anything right!

[Georgina]

I’ve only just discovered her too Shannon, I read house of Mirth last month and loved it so I’m looking forward to this one. I need to add Ethan Frome to my reading list.

[Georgina]

I’ve just finished. I think Edith Wharton is now one of my favourite authors, I loved it.

[Brian E]

I didn't join in as I have read this book twice already. It is in my top 10 novels of all time, partly due to fond memories of my initial reading of it in a single cold wintry day when I stayed home sick from grad school at age 24. Its a book to get 'wrapped up' in. I especially appreciate the wistful ending (view spoiler)[ While it doesn't seem like the ending one longs for, upon reflection, to me it is almost perfect; that it may be best not to attempt to rewalk the path left untaken. I probably appreciate it even more as a much older man now (hide spoiler)]

Wharton is one of my favorite authors. I have read 14 of her books, a number a bit inflated since several are novellas that have also been packaged together as Madame de Treymes and Three Novellas. While I did not enjoy the House of Mirth as much as many of her other books, I did really like Ethan Frome, though, but that may be because I was surprised as it had received negative reviews from my friends forced to read it in high school. I'm not sure that high school students can appreciate that book.