In the polished works of Edith Wharton, Old New York is a society at once infinitely sophisticated and ruthlessly primitive, in which adherence to ritual and loyalty to clan surpass all other values--and transgression is always punished.

The Age of Innocence is Wharton's 1920 novel of love menaced by convention, played out against a gorgeously arrayed backdrop of opera houses, lavish dinner parties, country homes, and luxurious deathbeds. The young lawyer Newland Archer believes that he must make an impossible choice: domesticity with his docile and lovely fianc e, May Welland, or passion with her highly unsuitable but irresistible cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska. What Newland does not suspect--but will learn--is that the women also hold cards in this game...