The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence (1920) is a classic romance novel by Edith Wharton, which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s. In 1920, The Age of Innocence was published twice; first in four parts, July – October, in the Pictorial Review magazine, and then by D. Appleton and Company as a book in New York and in London. The book was warmly received; the Times Book Review considered it "a brilliant panorama of New York's 45 years ago. The novel is in demand mostly at public libraries and a best seller in the bookstores." In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Age of Innocence 58th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2011, New York Magazine critic Sam Anderson named it "the single greatest New York novel."