The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton · first published 1920
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Edith Wharton's most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s, the world in which she grew up, and from which she spent her life escaping. Newland Archer, Wharton's protagonist, charming, tactful, enlightened, is a thorough product of this society; he accepts its standards and abides by its rules but he also recognizes its limitations. His engagement to the impeccable May Welland assures him of a safe and conventional future, until the arrival of May's cousin Ellen Olenska puts all his plans in je
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…the Mississippi and Roughing It. Emma and Pride and Prejudice. Iliad, Odyssey and first half of the Aeneid. A Room With A View and The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Great Gatsby, Call of the Wild and Age of Innocence. War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Don Quixote.
on “Ask HN: What are some must read books?” ↗…European conventions for class, and simultaneously, there was a ton of economic growth fueling the noveau riche. That's when we got people like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. It's the time when Wharton's The Age of Innocence was set (highly recommend this book). Old money went to the opera at the Academy of Music Opera House, and new money went to the Metropolitan Opera House. (Guess which one is still around.)
on “Class Bullshitters” ↗…House of Mirth, which I had tried reading as an eighteen- year-old college boy and just didn’t get. Now at fifty-four, it’s crushing. Absolutely crushing. And the writing is just stupendous. I also love Age of Innocence and The Custom of the County. Just going to Edith Wharton every morning was fantastic and blew away any television or movie that I could find online. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/bret-easton-ellis-...
on “Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?” ↗When last were weddings sacred, in the sense of not open to public comment? In Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence the mother of the bride is horrified at the notion that reporters might take a picture of her daughter and put it in the newspapers; and surely they would have. There is the folk tradition of the "shivaree".…
on “Weddings Used To Be Sacred And Other Lessons About Internet Journalism” ↗I think of a passage in Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence: """ The idea of doing away with this awning, and revealing the bride to the mob of dressmakers and newspaper reporters who stood outside fighting to get near the joints of the canvas, exceeded even…
on “The rise of the camera launched a fight to protect Gilded Age privacy” ↗