Edith Wharton's masterpiece brings to life the grandeur and hypocrisy of a gilded age. Set among the very rich in 1870s New York, it tells the story of Newland Archer, a young lawyer engaged to marry virginal socialite May Welland, when he meets her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, a woman unbound by convention and surrounded by scandal. As all three are drawn into a love triangle filled with sensuality, subtlety, and betrayal, Archer faces a harrowing choice between happiness and the social code that has ruled his life. The resulting tale of thwarted love is filled with irony and surprise, struggle and acceptance. Recipient of the first Pulitzer Prize for fiction ever awarded to a woman, this great novel paints a timeless portrait of "society" still unmatched in American literature-an arbitrary, capricious social elite that professes inviolable standards but readily abandons them for greed and desire.
Edith Wharton nació en Nueva York en 1862. Su nombre de soltera era Edith Newbold Jones. Su familia era de clase alta, comparable a la aristocracia europea, y consecuentemente recibió una esmerada educación privada. En 1907 se estableció en Francia, donde se convirtió en discípula y amiga de Henry James. Su obra más conocida es La edad de la inocencia, publicada en 1920 y ganadora del premio Pulitzer en 1921. Está considerada la más genial novelista americana de su generación, admirada por intelectuales de la talla de Henry James, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Jean Cocteau y Ernest Hemingway.
