Louis Auchincloss

Home > People > Literature and the Arts > American Literature: Biographies

Louis Auchincloss (Louis Stanton Auchincloss) , 1917–2010, American novelist and man of letters, b. Lawrence, New York; studied Yale, Univ. of Virginia Law School (LL.B., 1941). A member of a prominent New York family, he was a prolific writer with more than 60 titles to his credit and a full-time Wall Street lawyer until his retirement in 1987. His business experience and social background are reflected in his polished novels of manners, which mainly relate the concerns of well-to-do and well-connected white Protestants, and in his fiction's recurring emphasis on matters of class and morality. His first novel was published under a pseudonym in 1947. His subsequent novels include The Romantic Egoists (1954), Venus in Sparta (1958), The Rector of Justin (1964; widely regarded as his finest novel), The Embezzler (1966), The Partners (1974), The Dark Lady (1977), Watchfires (1982), Honorable Men (1985), East Side Story (2004), and his final book, The Last of the Old Guard (2008), whose title might have accurately described its author. He also wrote Reflections of a Jacobite (1961), on Henry James, Edith Wharton: A Biography (1971), Richelieu (1972), Woodrow Wilson (2000), and Theodore Roosevelt (2001) as well as literary essays and short stories; The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss was published in 1994.

Bibliography: See his memoirs, A Writer's Capital (1974) and A Voice from Old New York (2010); biography by C. W. Gelderman (1993, rev. ed. 2007); studies by C. C. Dahl (1986), D. B. Parsell (1988), and V. Piket (1991).