A story of love and betrayal among the rich and sophisticated.Newland Archer is about to achieve every young man's dream. His engagement to the wealthy young heiress,May Welland, has just been announced. But Newland has a secret: he is secretly in love with May's cousin, the scandalous divorcee, Countess Ellen Olenska, who has brought to New York all the glitter and glamour of Europe's aristocratic playground.May is lovely, but innocent. Ellen Olenska is worldly and passionate. Newland has a choice: does he make the honorable choice? Or follow his heart?

Old New York in The Age of Innocence is New York of the 1870s and 1880s, a time when the elegant lived in brownstones "of which the uniform hue coated New York like a cold chocolate sauce," a time when living above 34th Street was "peculiar," when East 39th street was considered "remote," and Central Park was "an inaccessible wilderness." The behavior, manners, language, dress, and accoutrements of oId New York society were strictly prescribed and adhered to and, though she was writing from memories nearly half a century old, Edith Wharton seemed to remember everything. As she wrote to one friend, "every detail of that far-off scene was indelibly stamped on my infant brain."