The Age of Innocence
- Downloads
- 100+
- First published
- 1920
- Pages
- 288
Listen to The Age of Innocence Audiobook Free
-
Chapter 01
19:13 -
Chapter 02
15:24 -
Chapter 03
17:28 -
Chapter 04
12:56 -
Chapter 05
21:47 -
Chapter 06
19:20 -
Chapter 07
15:03 -
Chapter 08
17:39 -
Chapter 09
27:41 -
Chapter 10
21:51 -
Chapter 11
18:29 -
Chapter 12
26:49 -
Chapter 13
16:17 -
Chapter 14
16:39 -
Chapter 15
24:22 -
Chapter 16
22:02 -
Chapter 17
21:23 -
Chapter 18
26:46 -
Chapter 19
26:32 -
Chapter 20
28:01 -
Chapter 21
31:26 -
Chapter 22
18:50 -
Chapter 23
22:24 -
Chapter 24
12:59 -
Chapter 25
21:31 -
Chapter 26
24:58 -
Chapter 27
16:51 -
Chapter 28
15:15 -
Chapter 29
17:33 -
Chapter 30
22:15 -
Chapter 31
30:43 -
Chapter 32
22:17 -
Chapter 33
37:40 -
Chapter 34
42:08
The Age of Innocence (1920) is a public domain work.
The audio edition streams in the page. There is no audio file to download.
About this book
Edith Wharton's novel is set in 1870s New York, where old families police manners and marriage. Newland Archer, a lawyer, is engaged to the well-suited May Welland when her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, returns from a failed marriage in Europe. Her presence unsettles the social circle and Archer's plans. The Age of Innocence appeared in 1920 and won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, making Wharton the first woman to win it.
From the opening pages
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distances "above the Forties," of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.
It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had already learned to describe as "an exceptionally brilliant audience" had gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family landau, or in the humbler but more convenient "Brown coupe." To come to the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving as in one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had the immense advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion to democratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in the line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of one's own coachman gleamed under the portico of the Academy. It was one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.
When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a cigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking. But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was "not the thing" to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not "the thing" played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago.
About the author
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Public domain book This work is in the public domain and free of copyright. Anyone may read, download and share it.
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Book facts
- Author
- Edith Wharton
- First published
- 1920
- Reading time
- About 7 hours
- Pages
- 288
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Victorian Era
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, Read online, Audiobook
- Audio read by
- Brenda Dayne