THE AGE OF INNOCENCE: Edith Wharton excels at creating woebegone high society rich people, and Countess Ellen Olenska is certainly both fancy and sad. Her doomed affair with fellow fancy sad person Newland Archer, who is engaged (and then married) to her cousin offers readers a look at the societal hierarchies that trapped elegant NYC society during the late 19th century, a time period in which Wharton came of age, though the novel was published in 1920. Fun historical fact: Wharton became the first woman to win a Pulitzer thanks to this baby.