<p>(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)</p><p> </p><p><i>The Age of Innocence</i>, one of Edith Wharton's most renowned novels and the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, exquisitely details the struggle between love and responsibility through the experiences of men and women in Gilded Age New York.</p><p> </p><p>The novel follows Newland Archer, a young, aristocratic lawyer engaged to the cloistered, beautiful May Welland. When May's disgraced cousin Ellen arrives from Europe, fleeing her marriage to a Polish Count, her worldly, independent nature intrigues Archer, who soon falls in love with her. Trapped by his passionless relationship with May and the social conventions that forbid a relationship with Ellen, Archer finds himself torn between possibility and duty.</p><p> </p><p>Wharton's profound understanding of her characters' lives makes the triangle of Archer, May, and Ellen come to life with an irresistible urgency. A wry, incisive look at the ways in which love and emotion must negotiate the complex rules of high society, <i>The Age of Innocence</i> is one of Wharton's finest, most illuminative works.</p><p> </p><p>With an introduction by Peter Washington</p>