THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. by Wharton Edith - 1920

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1920. First Edition, Mixed Issue, with the corrected quote from the marriage service and 1920 on both the title and copyright pages and no number at the end. 8vo, publisher’s original red cloth,the upper cover and spine lettered in black. 365 pp. A handsome copy with covers fresh and bright and the expected minor mellowing to the spine panel, a tight and clean copy. SCARCE FIRST EDITION. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE RECEIVED THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR LITERATURE, the first time is was accorded to a woman. The Prize established Wharton as the American "First Lady of Letters". Set in the time of Wharton's childhood, it had allowed her to find "a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America... it was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914." The novel is also noteworthy for Wharton's attention to detail and her accurate portrayal of how the 19th-century American upper class lived.