The Age of Innocence

Originally published in 1920, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton's twelfth novel, initially serialized in four parts in the Pictorial Review magazine in 1920, and later released by D. Appleton and Company as a book in New York and in London. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Synopsis
Wealthy lawyer Newland Archer is engaged to sweet socialite May Welland in 1870s New York. On the surface, it is a perfect match. But when May's beautiful cousin Countess Ellen Olenska, who is estranged from her brutish husband, arrives in town, Newland begins to question the meaning of passion and love as he desperately pursues a relationship with Ellen, even though she has been made a social outcast by Archer's peers.