The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton's most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870's, the world in which she grew up, and from which she spent her life escaping. Stephen Orgel, who also spent his life escaping from New York, contributes a critical introduction and detailed annotations. This is the third Edith Wharton novel he has edited in the Oxford World's Classics.
About the Author
Stephen Orgel has published widely on the political and historical aspects of Renaissance literature, theater, art history and the history of the book. His work is interdisciplinary, and is increasingly concerned with the patronage system, the nature of representation, and performance practice in the Renaissance. His most recent book is Spectacular Performances (2011), and The Reader in the Book is forthcoming in 2015. He is also the author of Imagining Shakespeare (2003), The Authentic Shakespeare (2002), Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge, 1996), The Illusion of Power (Berkeley, 1975), Inigo Jones (London and Berkeley, 1973, in collaboration with Sir Roy Strong), and The Jonsonian Masque (Cambridge, Mass., 1965). He has edited Ben Jonson's masques, Christopher Marlowe's poems and translations, the Oxford Authors John Milton, The Tempest and The Winter's Tale in The Oxford Shakespeare, Trollope's Lady Anna, and Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence and The Reef in the Oxford World's Classics. He is the general editor of Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, and of the new Pelican Shakespeare. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, NEH Fellowships, and ACLS Fellowships; he has been a Getty Fellow, a visiting fellow at New College, Oxford, and the Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and on the board of the Associazione Malatesta in Italy.