The Age of Innocence--Edith Wharton [0]
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
BOOK I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
BOOK II
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Afterword
Selected Bibliography
Edith Jones Wharton (1862-1937) was born in New York City into a family of merchants, bankers, and lawyers. In 1885 she married Edward Wharton of Boston. The couple lived in New York, Newport, Lenox, and Paris until their divorce in 1913, when Edith Wharton settled permanently in Paris. During World War I, Wharton was active in relief work in France, and in 1915, she was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor for her service. Edith Wharton’s earliest stories were published in Scribner’s Magazine, but she did not include these in her first collection of short stories, The Greater Inclination (1899). Her most famous novels include The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913), Summer (1917), and the Pulitzer Prize- winning The Age of Innocence (1920).
Regina Barreca, a professor of English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut, is the editor of the influential journal LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory. She is the author of They Used to Call Me Snow White . . . But I Drifted . . . , a widely acclaimed study of women’s humor, and Perfect Husbands (& Other Fairy Tales). Barreca is also the editor of The Signet Book of American Humor.
Judith P. Saunders is Professor of English at Marist College in New York State. Her published commentary addresses a wide variety of nineteenth and twentieth century literary figures, including Edith Wharton. She is the author of The Poetry of Charles Tomlinson.
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Introduction copyright © Regina Barreca, 1996
Afterword copyright © Judith P. Saunders, 2008
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Introduction
‘‘Then what, exactly, is your plan for us?’’ he asked.
‘‘For us? But there’s no us in that sense! We’re near each other only if we stay far from each other. Then we can be ourselves. Otherwise we’re only Newland Archer, the husband of Ellen Olenska’s cousin, and Ellen Olenska, the cousin of Newland Archer’s wife, trying