When Edith Wharton was in her mid-40s, she had a sexual awakening. For decades, the celebrated novelist had been stuck in a dull, loveless marriage to Edward Robbins Wharton, a fellow patrician 12 years older than her. Then she met debonair journalist William Morton Fullerton and fell—hard.
“I have drunk of the wine of life at last,” she wrote on May 21, 1908, in the document Wharton scholars call her “love diary.” “I have known the thing best worth knowing, I have been warmed through & through, never to grow quite cold again til the end.” Years later, she’d finally divorce Teddy and move abroad, where she’d channel these transformative experiences into her most celebrated novel: The Age of Innocence, published in 1920.
“I was at a place where I said I want to do anything except period, because I’ve done so much period,” says showrunner Emma Frost, whose résumé includes a trio of lavish historical series: The White Queen, The White Princess, and The Spanish Princess. But when Netflix asked if she might be interested in adapting The Age of Innocence, she reconsidered. Frost had read the novel and seen Martin Scorsese’s lush 1993 adaptation, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, and Michelle Pfeiffer. “I remembered it was the very first love story I ever engaged with that felt truly adult,” she says.
