Gore Vidal said, "Of all our novelists, Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices and their clubs.... Not since Dreiser has an American writer had so much to tell us about the role of money in our lives."
Franklin Library Louis Auchincloss books
Diary of a Yuppie - signed first edition - 1986
Exit Lady Masham - signed first edition -1983
The Rector of Justin - signed limited edition - 1977
The Winthrop Covenant - limited first edition -1976
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Louis Auchincloss biography
Born in Lawrence, New York, he grew up in the privileged classes about whom he would write, attending St. Bernard's School, Groton School, and Yale University, where he was editor of the Yale Literary Magazine, and a member of Scroll and Key Society. Notwithstanding he did not complete undergraduate studies at Yale, he was admitted to and attended law school at the University of Virginia, where he graduated in 1941, the year in which he was also admitted to the New York Bar. He was an associate at Sullivan and Cromwell from 1941 to 1951 (with an interruption for war service from 1941 to 1945 in the United States Navy during World War II). After a break to pursue full-time writing, Auchincloss returned to working as a lawyer, firstly as an associate (1954–58) and then as a partner (1958–86) at Hawkins, Delafield and Wood in New York City as a wills and trusts attorney, while writing a novel per year.
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 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1965. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2005. He has received honorary degrees from New York University (Litt.D., 1974), Pace University (1979) and The University of the South (1986).
Source and additional information: Louis Auchincloss