The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton 1862–1937
The book, and the century it came out of.
Newland Archer is engaged to the correct girl when her cousin returns from Europe with a failed marriage behind her and no intention of pretending otherwise. Wharton was born inside old New York and dismantled it from the inside; this was the first novel by a woman to win the Pulitzer, and she wrote it in France, in her fifties, about a world that had already vanished. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Martineau, Boutibonne and Bles among them.
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Love & Society
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 320 pages
- Reading time
- about 6 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785486148491
60 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
1920, looking back at the 1870s
Wharton wrote it just after the First World War, about the New York of her childhood, and won the Pulitzer for it — the first woman to do so. The distance is the point: a world of unbreakable rules described by someone who had watched it be swept away entirely.
The society it anatomises had perhaps a few hundred members and governed itself by silence and seating plans. Wharton knew it from inside, had escaped it, and was writing from Paris, divorced, at fifty-eight.
This book in culture: one version
Most people meet a book like this one on a screen first. Here is what was made of it — and none of these is the book.
- 1993 The Age of Innocence Martin Scorsese
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
The Age of Innocence, first published 1920, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Love & Society shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785486148491, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of The Age of Innocence?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Edith Wharton's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 320 pages, which is roughly about 6 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
