The Age of Desire - Hardcover

"Beautiful ... an imaginative tour-de-force with the best-written naughty bits I have ever read." (Wendy Holden Daily Mail)

"A fascinating insight into the life of my favourite novelist. Fields brings a secret side of Wharton to life, and shows us a woman whose elegant façade concealed a turbulent sensuality" (Daisy Goodwin)

"With astonishing tenderness and immediacy, The Age of Desire portrays the interwoven lives of Edith Wharton and Anna Bahlmann, her governess, secretary, and close friend. By focusing on these two women from vastly different backgrounds, Jennie Fields miraculously illuminates an entire era....I was filled with regret that I’d finished reading so soon" (Lauren Belfer, author of City of Light and A Fierce Radiance)

"[Fields’] portrayal of Edith Wharton in love is imaginative and bold and offers a touching view of Wharton... Fields immerses us in Wharton’s household, her social milieu, and her most private self." (Irene Goldman-Price, editor of My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann)

"This is a heartbreaking, exquisitely told story. Fields’ imagining of the passions, desperation and divided loyalties of her subjects is mesmerizing. Highly recommended." (Historical Novel Society)

She is the darling of Parisian society. A famous author whose novels have captivated readers. He is a charming young journalist with nothing to lose.

While novelist Edith Wharton writes of grand love affairs, she has yet to experience her own. Her marriage is more platonic than passionate and her closest relationship is with her literary secretary, Anna Bahlmann.

Then Edith meets dashing Morton Fullerton, and her life is at last opened to the world of the sensual. But, in giving in to the temptation of their illicit liaison, Edith could lose everything else she holds dear...

Set in the Gilded Age of Paris society, Jennie Field’s sumptuous novel retells the true story of a scandal involving one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century.