CookbookResearch and civic lifeNo. 50
A book club guideauthor, context and questions for every meeting
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Alder Street ReadersNo. 4
March — The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton, 1920)
11 sections, 3,480 words, about 15 minutes, filed 9 February, revised 28 February, 3 highlights, shared.
Welcome back. March is our second Wharton of the year, after Ethan Frome in January, chosen at the December vote by a margin of two. It is funny in places, and the ending has divided every group I have ever read it with. The two books are closer than they look, and that is where I would like us to start.
Our two Wharton novels: what each has alone, and what they share
Two overlapping circles. Ethan Frome, 1911, alone: Starkfield, Massachusetts, in winter; a poor hill farm; told by an outsider, an engineer working nearby; the sledding crash. The Age of Innocence, 1920, alone: New York society in the 1870s; the opera and the ballrooms; seen through Newland Archer; the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. Both: a man who loves his wife’s cousin, a town that watches, he never leaves, and an ending set years later.
- Ethan Frome (1911)
- Starkfield, in winter
- A poor hill farm
- Told by an outsider
- The sledding crash
- The Age of Innocence (1920)
- New York, the 1870s
- Opera and ballrooms
- Seen through Archer
- Pulitzer Prize, 1921
- Both, where Ethan Frome (1911) and The Age of Innocence (1920) overlap
- Loves his wife’s cousin
- A town that watches
- He never leaves
- Ends years later
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"text": "Seen through Archer",
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"text": "Pulitzer Prize, 1921",
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"text": "Loves his wife’s cousin",
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"text": "A town that watches",
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```We meet on Tuesday 9 March at 6.30 in the Garden Room. Large-print copies are at the desk, and the Project Gutenberg edition is free if you read on a screen.
Sections
- 1Wharton and old New York: born into the world she describesEvidence, keyEdith Newbold Jones was born in New York in 1862, into the families whose rules the novel sets out.
- 2Written in France after the war, set in the 1870sEvidenceWharton wrote the novel at 58, looking back across the First World War at a New York that had gone.
- 3Old New York in the 1870s: the families and their rulesEvidenceWho dined with whom, and why the van der Luydens mattered more than money.
- 4Pictorial Review, Appleton and the 1921 PulitzerEvidence, keySerialised in four parts in 1920; Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
- 5Questions: Book One, chapters 1–9QuestionThe opera, the Beaufort ball and the engagement. What does Archer think he wants from May?
and 6 more sections
How it works
Fourteen people, ninety minutes, and a dozen good questions ready for when the room goes quiet. Your assistant does the legwork on each book: who the author was, what the book was answering, what critics said then and since, every source credited. You choose the questions, write the welcome in your own voice, and send members one read-only link.
Try this prompt
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