Louis Auchincloss

Louis Stanton Auchincloss (born September 27, 1917) is a prolific American novelist, historian, and essayist. Born in New York City, he grew up in the privileged classes about whom he would write, attending Groton School, and Yale University, where he was editor of the Yale Literary Magazine, and a member of Scroll and Key Society. After serving in the Navy in World War II, Auchincloss wondered whether to become a writer or a lawyer; finally, he realised both (despite not completing undergraduate studies at Yale, he was admitted to and attended law school of the University of Virginia), writing a novel per year whilst working as a wills and trusts attorney with Hawkins, Delafield & Wood.

Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents; Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story; The Rector of Justin, the tale of the beloved headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times; and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss has patterned his writing after that of Henry James and Edith Wharton.

Auchincloss was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1965. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2005.

Selected works

Novels

• The Indifferent Children (1947)
• Sybil (1952)
• A Law for the Lion (1953)
• The Great World and Timothy Colt (1956)
• Venus in Sparta (1958)
• Pursuit of the Prodigal (1959)
• The House of Five Talents (1960)
• Portrait in Brownstone (1962)
• The Rector of Justin (1964)
• The Embezzler (1966)
• A World of Profit (1968)
• I Come as a Thief (1972)
• The Dark Lady (1977)
• The Country Cousin (1978)
• The House of the Prophet (1980)
• The Cat and the King (1981)
• Watchfires (1982)
• Exit Lady Masham (1983)
• The Book Class (1984)
• Honourable Men (1986)
• Diary of a Yuppie (1987)
• The Golden Calves (1988)
• Fellow Passengers: A Novel in Portraits (1989)
• The Lady of Situations (1990)
• Three Lives (1993)
• The Education of Oscar Fairfax (1995)
• Her Infinite Variety (2000)
• The Scarlet Letters (2003)
• East Side Story (2004)
• The Headmaster's Dilemma (2007)

Short stories

• The Injustice Collectors (1950)
• The Romantic Egoists (1954)
• Powers of Attorney (1963)
• Tales of Manhattan (1967)
• Second Chance: Tales of Two Generations (1970)
• The Partners (1974)
• The Winthrop Covenant (1976)
• Narcissa and Other Fables (1982)
• Skinny Island: More Tales of Manhattan (1987)
• False Gods (1992)
• Tales of Yesteryear (1994)
• The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss (1994)
• The Atonement and Other Stories (1997)
• The Anniversary and Other Stories (1999)
• Manhattan Monologues (2002)
• The Young Apollo and Other Stories (2006)
• The Friend of Women and Other Stories (2007)

Nonfiction

• Reflections of a Jacobite (1961)
• Pioneers and Caretakers: A Study of Nine American Women Novelists (1965)
• On Sister Carrie (1968)
• Motiveless Malignity (1969)
• Edith Wharton: A Woman in Her Time (1972)
• Richelieu (1972)
• A Writer's Capital (1974)
• Reading Henry James (1975)
• Life, Law, and Letters: Essays and Sketches (1979)
• Persons of Consequence: Queen Victoria and Her Circle (1979)
• False Dawn: Women in the Age of the Sun King (1985)
• The Vanderbilt Era: Profiles of a Gilded Age (1989)
• Love without Wings: Some Friendships in Literature and Politics (1991)
• The Style's the Man: Reflections on Proust, Fitzgerald, Wharton, Vidal, and Others (1994)
• The Man Behind the Book: Literary Profiles (1996)
• Woodrow Wilson (Penguin Lives) (2000)
• Theodore Roosevelt (The American Presidents Series) (2002)

External links

• 1986 audio interview with Louis Auchincloss by Don Swaim (CBS Radio - RealAudio)
• Louis Auchincloss at 80 (The New Criterion)
• Review of Christopher Dahl's 1986 critical biography of Louis Auchincloss (American Literature: Vol. 60, No. 2, p. 308-10)