Publisher Comments: With The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize. Set against the old New York of her youth, the novel portrays with unparalleled elegance the grandeur of the aristocratic order and the plight of those who envisioned freedom from its moral conventions. Here is the story of Newland Archer, a man engaged to the beautiful society girl May Welland, but privately longing for a life of genuine passion with the spirited countess Ellen Olenska. Recognized in her time as "a writer who brings glory on the name America," (The New York Times, 1920), Edith Wharton's eminence endures and her triumphant novel remains a compelling account of desire and its consequences.