This classic earned Edith Wharton the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature -- the first time it was ever awarded to a woman. Set in the exclusive world of upper-class New York in the 1870s (where people "dread scandal more than disease"), Newland Archer is about to settle down and marry a beautiful young girl from a suitable family, May Welland. His structured life is thrown into turmoil when he meets May's cousin, the captivating and exotic Countess Olenska, and finds that he is falling in love with her. With a style that is both wonderfully comic and deeply moving, Wharton perfectly captures the psychological realities of an era when upper-class culture in the U.S. -- a blend of American and European -- conformed to a most rigid set of societal rules. Wharton attacks the hypocrisies inherent in the old society from which she came, and the new money class she saw emerging around her. A Cover to Cover Unabridged Classic.