In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.' Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Price for fiction and the basis of the sumptuous 1993 Martin Scorsese movie, Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence shows no sign of losing popularity as each new generation embraces this devastating tale of love and loss set amongst the upper classes in 1870s New York. The story centers on a couple