“One must occasionally be grateful in a day devoted, on the one hand, to detail, and on the other to a futuristic sketchiness, for a literary gift as serene as Mrs Wharton’s. Her new novel, ‘The age of innocence,’ is the perfect fruit of an austere and disciplined art.” L. M. R.
+ Freeman 2:358 D 22 ’20 240w
“The interest of the story lies, not with the doings of the rather wooden characters of the book, but with the picture it purports to give of New York some fifty years ago. Here the author is clearly at fault in portraying a society of such portentous dullness and also in representing the town as devoid of anything else. The book is full of anachronisms which are sure to be noticed by old New-Yorkers.”
− Lit D p52 F 5 ’21 880w
“‘The age of innocence’ is a masterly achievement. In lonely contrast to almost all the novelists who write about fashionable New York, she knows her world. In lonely contrast to the many who write about what they know without understanding it or interpreting it, she brings a superbly critical disposition to arrange her knowledge in significant forms.” C. V. D.
+ Nation 111:510 N 3 ’20 580w
“Someone told me that ‘The age of innocence’ was ‘a dull book about New York society in the seventies.’ This is amusing. It is, undoubtedly, a quiet book, and quietness is dullness to the jazz-minded. It is really a book of unsparing perception and essential passionateness, full of necessary reserve, but at the same time full of verity.” F. H.
+ New Repub 24:301 N 17 ’20 1450w
“Mrs Wharton’s story-telling method is precise and neat, and it is her own. What surprises us, however, in ‘The age of innocence’ is the pervasive glint of oblique criticism that dazzles our eyes from almost every page. And that criticism is no wise lessened because it happens to be leveled against New York society of the ’70s. Is New York, or America, so different in the year 1920?” Pierre Loving
+ N Y Call p10 D 12 ’20 1100w