Age of Innocence (纯真年代)|报价￥20.40|图书,进口原版,Literature & Fiction 文学/小说,Classics 名著,Edith Wharton

品牌：Edith Wharton

基本信息

·出版社：Bantam Classics

·页码：320 页码

·出版日：1996年

·ISBN：0553214500

·条码：9780553214505

·装帧：平装

内容简介

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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.

作者简介

The upper stratum of New York society into which Edith Wharton was born in 1862 provided her with an abundance of material as a novelist but did not encourage her growth as an artist. Educated by tutors and governesses, she was raised for only one career: marriage. But her marriage, in 1885, to Edward Wharton was an emotional disappointment, if not a disaster. She suffered the first of a series of nervous breakdowns in 1894. In spite of the strain of her marriage, or perhaps because of it, she began to write fiction and published her first story in 1889.

Her first published book was a guide to interior decorating, but this was followed by several novels and story collections. They were written while the Whartons lived in Newport and New York, traveled in Europe, and built their grand home, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. In Europe, she met Henry James, who became her good friend, traveling companion, and the sternest but most careful critic of her fiction.The House of Mirth(1905) was both a resounding critical success and a bestseller, as wasEthan Frome(1911). In 1913 the Whartons were divorced, and Edith took up permanent residence in France. Her subject, however, remained America, especially the moneyed New York of her youth. Her great satiric novel,The Custom of the Countrywas published in 1913 andThe Age of Innocencewon her the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.

In her later years, she enjoyed the admiration of a new generation of writers, including Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In all, she wrote some thirty books, including an autobiography.A Backwards Glance(1934). She died at her villa near Paris in 1937.

编辑推荐

Amazon.com

Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makesThe Age of Innocenceso indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old New York, and Newland Archer's impossible love for the disgraced Countess Olenska, is a perfectly wrought book about an era when upper-class culture in this country was still a mixture of American and European extracts, and when "society" had rules as rigid as any in history.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile

Welcome to the New York of the 1870's, where everyone in the upper crust fits into the mold or is ostracized for nonconformity. In spite of having married the socially suitable May, Weland Archer wishes to be unconventional and sees the Countess Olenska as a role model at the same time that he falls in love with her. Wanda McCaddon is a perfect narrator for this book. Her voice is as cold and sharp as the society she reads about. Through her intonation and phrasing, a stifling Victorian mask drops over each character. As Wharton describes a society long ago, McCaddon brings it to life in a dry, droll, appropriately uncaptivating manner. M.B.K. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

专业书评

Shari Benstock, University of Miami

Michael Nowlin's edition is an excellent resource...--This text refers to thePaperbackedition.

Review

"Is it—in this world—vulgar to ask for more? To entreat a little wildness, a dark place or two in the soul?"—Katherine Mansfield

"There is no woman in American literature as fascinating as the doomed Madame Olenska. . . . Traditionally, Henry James has always been placed slightly higher up the slope of Parnassus than Edith Wharton. But now that the prejudice against the female writer is on the wane, they look to be exactly what they are: giants, equals, the tutelary and benign gods of our American literature."—Gore Vidal

"Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security and alertness which characterizes Mrs. Wharton and her tradition?"—E. M. Forster

Review

"Is it--in this world--vulgar to ask for more? To entreat a little wildness, a dark place or two in the soul?"--Katherine Mansfield

"There is no woman in American literature as fascinating as the doomed Madame Olenska. . . . Traditionally, Henry James has always been placed slightly higher up the slope of Parnassus than Edith Wharton. But now that the prejudice against the female writer is on the wane, they look to be exactly what they are: giants, equals, the tutelary and benign gods of our American literature."--Gore Vidal

"Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security and alertness which characterizes Mrs. Wharton and her tradition?"--E. M. Forster

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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