The Age of Innocence

A full-cast Unabridged of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a passionate love affair which breaks all the rules of the restrictive high society of 1870s New York.

In the exclusive world of upper-class New York, in which attendance at balls and dinner passes for occupation, Newland Archer anticipates his marriage to May Welland, a beautiful young girl from a suitable family "who knows nothing and expects everything." Into this well-ordered community May's cousin, the captivating and exotic Countess Olenska, arrives. She has returned from Europe after the collapse of her marriage and alternately enchants and outrages New York society with her cosmopolitan lifestyle. Newland is sympathetic to her escape from a loveless marriage, and as his sympathy deepens into love he not only gains insight into the brutality of society's treatment of women, but also discovers the real anguish of loving outside its rules.

Dramatised by Jane Rogers, starring Andrew Wincott and...

NY Times Book Review

One of the best novels of the 20th century.

One of America's most important novelists, Edith Wharton was a refined, relentless chronicler of the Gilded Age and its social mores. Along with close friend Henry James, she helped define literature at the turn of the 20th century, even as she wrote classic nonfiction on travel, decorating and her own life.