The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence is a perfect novel to read in the spring — maybe its all the flowers — so I finally picked it up to re-read, in part due to this excellent episode from the Gilded Gentleman which we are presenting to you this week. The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s most famous novel, an enduring classic of Old New York that has been rediscovered by a new generation. What is it about this story of Newland Archer, May Welland and Countess Olenska that readers respond to today?Noted Wharton scholar Dr. Emily Orlando joins Carl Raymond on The Gilded Gentleman podcast to delve into the background of this novel, take a deep dive into the personalities of the major characters and discuss what Wharton wanted to say in her masterpiece.  Edith Wharton published The Age of Innocence at a very important moment in her life. When the novel came out in 1920, she had been living in France full-time for nearly 10 years and had seen the devastating effects of World War I up close. Her response was to look