#125 in Romance
The Age of Innocence
- 348
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
- Film 1993
- On screen
- Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
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Our view
“The Age of Innocence” is a finely observed portrait of upper-class New York in the 1870s, a society ruled by unspoken codes. Wharton builds that world with care and a quiet humour. Many readers find the book slow, and some cannot sympathise with its hero, Newland Archer, while others feel for everyone involved. A book for those who enjoy a novel of manners.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Age of Innocence is a novel by American author Edith Wharton, published on 25 October 1920. It was her eighth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Though the committee had initially agreed to give the award to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street, the judges, in rejecting his book on political grounds, "established Wharton as the American 'First Lady of Letters'". The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, "Gilded Age" New York City. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s, after she was already established as a major author in high demand by publishers.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen once.
- FilmThe Age of InnocenceIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.7 across 263 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 64% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Romance average of 7.6. That is how 7.8 comes out. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.1 | 48 | 18% |
| Hardcover | 7.9 | 215 | 82% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Age of Innocence?
It has 348 pages — shorter than 76% of the ranked books in Romance.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Romance — with scores between 7.0 and 8.2, closest to this book.
