The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It was her twelfth novel and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Though the committee had initially agreed to give the award to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street the judges in rejecting his book on political grounds established Wharton as the American First Lady of Letters. The story is set in the 1870s in upper-class Gilded-Age New York City. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s after she had established herself as a strong author with publishers clamoring for her work.