The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - 1987

Shelton, CT: The First Edition Library, 1987. F/NF. Exact facsimile first edition as published by D. Appleton and Company in 1920. The only new additions are on the copyright page and the bottom of the rear flap (FEL). First Edition Library facsimiles have the same weight, size, typeface, art, dust jacket, finish, and texture as the originals. The book is tight and square with solid hinges, sharp tips, and clean unmarred boards. Textblock is clean with no writing, bookplate, or markings and not BCE, ex-library or remaindered. The dust jacket is near fine. Original price ($2.00 net) with faint wear to back edge of spine top. The slipcase is Near Fine with a tiny crease to the bottom front corner. 365 pages. 5 x 7½ " tall.

Newland Archer, an aristocratic young lawyer, is engaged to the cloistered, beautiful May Welland. But when May's cousin Ellen arrives from Europe, fleeing her failed marriage to a Polish count, her independent nature intrigues and unsettles Archer. Trapped in a passionless relationship with May and social conventions that forbid a relationship with the disgraced Ellen, Archer is torn between possibility and duty.

One of Edith Wharton's most famous novels — the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize — exquisitely details a tragic struggle between love and responsibility in Gilded Age New York.