Audiobook · read by volunteers
Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
Read by Brenda Dayne · 34 chapters · 12 h 32
About the book
New York in the 1870s is ruled by a small circle of old families who value manners above all else. Newland Archer, a young lawyer, is engaged to May Welland, a pleasant and perfectly proper young woman. Then May's cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, returns from Europe with a scandalous past, and Newland finds himself drawn to her. Should he follow his heart, or do what is expected of him? Edith Wharton's novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize, is a precise and often ironic portrait of a world where everything is seen and little is said. Under the polished surface lies real longing. Thirty-four chapters and about twelve and a half hours invite you to step into a vanished society.
Introduction
Edith Wharton was born in 1862 and died in 1937. She came from the New York society that she describes in her fiction, and she knew its rules from the inside. She went on to become one of the leading American novelists of her time, with books such as The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome, and she lived for many years in France.
The Age of Innocence appeared in 1920, and it was set in the 1870s, a generation before she wrote it. It depicts a small group of aristocratic families of "old revolutionary stock" who rule the city's social life. In this society, to be the right sort of person counts for more than to do anything, and reputation and outward appearance come before all else. This is the Gilded Age, when expansion and industry were raising up newly rich financiers, and the older families watch their position under threat. Wharton writes about it with irony and with affection, and she lets the reader feel what the code of manners costs those who live by it.
The book won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1921, and Wharton was the first woman to receive it.
This recording was made by a single LibriVox volunteer, who reads all thirty-four chapters. It lasts about twelve and a half hours. Why listen? Because the novel is both a period piece and a timeless story of desire and restraint. It is beautifully written, and its ending is one of the most quietly devastating in American fiction.
Public domain
Edith Wharton died in 1937: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text