Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence

2008 Blackstone Audio - Ripped from CDs with EAC, transcoded with dBPoweramp

96 kbps, Unabridged, Read by Lorna Raver
 
http://www.blackstonelibrary.com/the-age-of-innocence

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award

Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for literature ever awarded to a woman, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s elegant portrait of desire and betrayal in old New York.

In the highest circle of New York social life during the 1870s, Newland Archer, a young lawyer, prepares to marry the docile May Welland. But before their engagement is announced, he meets the mysterious, nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska, May’s cousin, who has returned to New York after a long absence. Ellen mirrors his own sense of disillusionment with society and the ‘good marriage’ he is about to embark upon and provokes a moral struggle within him as he continues to go through the motions.

A social commentary of surprising compassion and insight, The Age of Innocence toes the line between the comedy of manners and the tragedy of thwarted love.

Originally published in 1920

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was born in New York and is best known for her stories of life among the upper-class society into which she was born. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. In 1894 she began writing fiction, and her novel The House of Mirth established her as a leading writer. Her novels The Age of Innocence and Old New York were each awarded the Pulitzer Prize. She was the first woman to receive that honor. 

“There is no woman in American literature as fascinating as the doomed Madame Olenska...Traditionally, Henry James has always been placed slightly higher up the slope of Parnassus than Edith Wharton. But now that the prejudice against the female writer is on the wane, they look to be exactly what they are: giants, equals, the tutelary and benign gods of our American literature.”

Gore Vidal

“Wharton’s characters leap out from the pages and...become very real. You know their hearts, souls, and yearnings and the price they pay for those yearnings.”

San Francisco Examiner

“Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security and alertness which characterizes Mrs. Wharton and her tradition?”

E. M. Forster

“Eighty-five years after it won the Pulitzer Prize, Edith Wharton’s romantic novel remains as intriguing and captivating as ever. Unfortunately, its slow pace as it depicts turn-of-the-century New Yorkwill deter many of today’s readers. For this reason, this audio edition is a delight. By what seems to be some magic trick or secret ingredient, Lorna Raver manages to present distinctive and perfectly modulated voices for over a dozen characters. Some audio publishers might have been tempted to use multiple narrators. But Blackstone has enough faith in the words and pace of the novel itself to trust that this extremely perceptive single reader has all the tools she needs. Raver is not yet a household name in audiobooks, but she should be. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, NEA Big Read Selection.”

AudioFile

Lorna Raver, named one of AudioFile magazine’s Best Voices of the Year, has received numerous Audie nominations and AudioFile Earphones Awards. An experienced stage actress, she has also guest-starred on many top television series and starred in director Sam Raimi’s film Drag Me to Hell. Among her many Blackstone titles are The Age of Innocence, Up from Orchard Street, The Lodger, Selected Readings from the Portable Dorothy Parker, and Diamond Ruby.