Age of Innocence (Pan Macmillan)

Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence, is both a poignant story of frustrated love and an extraordinarily vivid, delightfully satirical record of a vanished world. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers.

These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features an introduction aby award-winning novelist, Rachel Cusk. As the scion of one of New York's leading families, Newland Archer has been born into a life of sumptuous privilege and strict duty.

But the arrival of the Countess Olenska, a free spirit who breathes clouds of European sophistication, makes him question the path on which his upbringing has set him. As his fascination with her grows, he discovers just how hard it is to escape the bonds of the society that has shaped him.

Lucid, intelligent, and artful rather than arty; she is eloquent but never fussy, and always clear. She never seems to be writing well to show off -- Lionel Shriver Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security and alertness which characterizes Mrs Wharton and her tradition$111 -- E.

M. Forster The Age of Innocence has as much in common with that popular Oprah-ish romance-rooted literary fashion as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet does -- Patrick T. Reardon It's a deliciously hard-edged satire of manners and customs...

Wharton was not only ferociously witty and morally committed, she was also a great storyteller -- Vincent Canby * New York Times * A great city's greatest novelist...