The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton’s novel of Newland Archer, a young lawyer in New York society of the 1870s who is engaged to the conventional May Welland, and of her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, who comes home from Europe after leaving her husband.

Start reading34 chapters, about 103,000 words

Famous quotes

• An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

  Book I, Chapter IIn context

  • Comedy
  • Music

• I can’t love you unless I give you up.

  Book I, Chapter XVIIIIn context

  • Love

• It was the old New York way of taking life “without effusion of blood”: the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,” except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.

  Book II, Chapter XXXIIIIn context

  • Character
  • Courage

• The worst of doing one’s duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

  Ch. 34In context

  • Responsibility

Contents

Book I

1. Chapter I
2. Chapter II
3. Chapter III
4. Chapter IV
5. Chapter V
6. Chapter VI
7. Chapter VII
8. Chapter VIII
9. Chapter IX
10. Chapter X
11. Chapter XI
12. Chapter XII
13. Chapter XIII
14. Chapter XIV
15. Chapter XV
16. Chapter XVI
17. Chapter XVII
18. Chapter XVIII

Book II

1. Chapter XIX
2. Chapter XX
3. Chapter XXI
4. Chapter XXII
5. Chapter XXIII
6. Chapter XXIV
7. Chapter XXV
8. Chapter XXVI
9. Chapter XXVII
10. Chapter XXVIII
11. Chapter XXIX
12. Chapter XXX
13. Chapter XXXI
14. Chapter XXXII
15. Chapter XXXIII
16. Chapter XXXIV