WHARTON, MRS EDITH NEWBOLD (JONES). Age of innocence. *$2 (1½c) Appleton
20–18615
The milieu of the story is New York “society” in the early seventies. It describes the old aristocracy who took life “without effusion of blood,” who “dreaded scandal more than disease,” who “placed decency above courage” and who considered “nothing more ill-bred than ‘scenes.’” Newland Archer was one of the few whose vision penetrated this crust of conventionality and he fell in love with the one off-color member of the tribe just as he had engaged himself to its most perfect product. Ellen Olenska, wife of a profligate European count, had left her husband and returned to America at this critical moment and Archer hastens his marriage to May Welland before he becomes too deeply involved with Ellen. Ellen’s fine sense of honor and of human kindliness, on the other hand, holds him to his compact and puts the ocean between herself and Archer by returning to Europe. Almost thirty years later, Archer has the satisfaction of seeing his own children step out freely and joyously on the road that had been closed to him.
“The time and the scene together suit Mrs Wharton’s talent to a nicety.” K. M.
+ − Ath p810 D 10 ’20 620w Booklist 17:161 Ja ’21
“On the book’s enduring quality it is idle to speculate. The slight theme beaten out with delicate care is the fashion of the day, and the best examples will no doubt remain. What is certain, however, is that a multitude of readers today will read with a well-justified delight this picture of New York in the ‘seventies.’” A. E. W. Mason
+ Bookm 52:360 D ’20 780w
“As a matter of fact, the author of ‘The age of innocence’ is not the Mrs Wharton of ‘The valley of decision,’ ‘The house of mirth,’ ‘Ethan Frome’ or of any one of the several volumes of short stories with which her reputation was made. She is the Mrs Wharton—with some of her skill and much of her knowledge of life remaining—of a new era that demands yellow pages in its fiction as well as yellow newspapers in its journalism. Until she becomes again the Mrs Wharton of a decade ago, she certainly cannot maintain her once high place among the novelists of today.” E. F. Edgett
− + Boston Transcript p4 O 23 ’20 1200w