The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is a novel of manners set in New York high society of the 1870s. It follows a young lawyer, Newland Archer, as he weighs personal desire against the strict expectations of his class. It is worth listening to for its subtle portrait of an era, its moral tensions, and its quiet emotional force.
For teachers and schools: paste the code into your site or blog.
Cover illustration generated by AI.
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton CONTENTS Book I CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII Book II
CHAPTER
XIX
CHAPTER
XX
CHAPTER
XXI
CHAPTER
XXII
CHAPTER
XXIII
CHAPTER
XXIV
CHAPTER
XXV
CHAPTER
XXVI
CHAPTER
XXVII
CHAPTER
XXVIII
CHAPTER
XXIX
CHAPTER
XXX
CHAPTER
XXXI
CHAPTER
XXXII
CHAPTER
XXXIII
CHAPTER
XXXIV
A Note on
the Text
Book I
I.
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distances "above the Forties," of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.
It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had already learned to describe as "an exceptionally brilliant audience" had gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family
Readnara
