In 1870s upper-crust New York, lawyer Newland Archer is torn between his conventional fiancee May Welland and her unconventional, European cousin the Countess Ellen Olenska.
Books mentioned in The Age of Innocence (14)
Middlemarch by George Eliot: “That evening he unpacked his books from London… and a novel called "Middlemarch," as to which there had lately been interesting things said in the reviews.”
The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne: “If you dined with the Lovell Mingotts you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines; at Adeline Archer's you could talk about Alpine scenery and "The Marble Faun"; and luckily the Archer Madeira had gone round the Cape.”
Monsieur de Camors by Octave Feuillet: “It amused Newland Archer (who had secretly situated the love-scenes of "Monsieur de Camors" in Mrs.”
The Shaughraun by Dion Boucicault: “The play was "The Shaughraun," with Dion Boucicault in the title role and Harry Montague and Ada Dyas as the lovers.”
Chastelard by Algernon Charles Swinburne: “He raised his head irritably when his sister Janey entered, and then quickly bent over his book (Swinburne's "Chastelard"--just out) as if he had not seen her.”
The House of Life by Dante Gabriel Rossetti: “Suddenly, among them, he lit on a small volume of verse which he had ordered because the name had attracted him: "The House of Life."”
Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “All this kept her very busy, and she had not had time to do more than look at the little vellum book that Archer had sent her the week before (the "Sonnets from the Portuguese"); but she was learning by heart "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," because it was one of the first things…”
The Culprit Fay by Joseph Rodman Drake: “Archer was always at pains to tell her children how much more agreeable and cultivated society had been when it included such figures as Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck and the poet of "The Culprit Fay."”
Contes Drolatiques by Honore de Balzac: “She glanced at the writing-table heaped with books, opened a volume of the "Contes Drolatiques," made a wry face over the archaic French, and sighed: "What learned things you read!"”
The Renaissance by Walter Pater: “Hamerton, and a wonderful new volume called "The Renaissance" by Walter Pater.”
Euphorion by Vernon Lee: “His boyhood had been saturated with Ruskin, and he had read all the latest books: John Addington Symonds, Vernon Lee's "Euphorion," the essays of P.”
Lettres a une Inconnue by Prosper Merimee: “…as Dukes; he had often pictured to himself what it would have been to live in the intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of Merimee (whose "Lettres a une Inconnue" was one of his inseparables), of Thackeray, Browning or William Morris.”
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.”
How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix by Robert Browning: “she was learning by heart "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," because it was one of the first things he had ever read to her”
Books that mention The Age of Innocence (2)
China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan: “Edith Wharton—The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers, The House of Mirth (must be read in strict order).”
Coventry by Rachel Cusk: “But unlike her other major novels... The Age of Innocence is not a story of contemporary America. The New York that is its subject was as dead, when Wharton wrote it”