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U.S. President George W. Bush and Laura Bush stand with author Louis Auchincloss, recipient of the 2005 National Medal of Arts on November 9, 2005, in the Oval Office.

Louis Stanton Auchincloss (pronounced Awk-kin-claus; born September 27, 1917) is an American novelist, historian, and essayist.

Biography

Born in Lawrence, New York, Auchincloss was the son of Joseph Howland Auchincloss and Priscilla Dixon Stanton.^[1] His paternal grandfather, John Winthrop Auchincloss, was the brother of Edgar Stirling Auchincloss (father of James C. Auchincloss) and Hugh Dudley Auchincloss (father of Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr.).^[2][3] He grew up among the privileged people about whom he would write, attending Groton School, and Yale University, where he was editor of the Yale Literary Magazine. Although he did not complete his undergraduate studies at Yale, he was admitted to and attended law school at the University of Virginia. He graduated in 1941 and was admitted to the New York bar the same year. He was an associate at Sullivan & 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 taking a break to pursue full-time writing ^[4], 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 at the rate of a book a year.

Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. Other well-known novels include The Rector of Justin, the tale of a renowned headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times, and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society.

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).

Bibliography

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

• Louis Auchincloss at 80 (The New Criterion)
• Review of Christopher Dahl's 1986 critical biography of Louis Auchincloss (American Literature: Vol. 60, No. 2, pp. 308–10)
• ‘The irony of my life’ A review of the career of Louis Auchincloss (The Financial Times, 21 September 2007)

References

1. ^ Gelderman, Carol (2007). Louis Auchincloss: A Writer's Life. Univ of South Carolina Press. p. 9. ISBN 9781570037115. http://books.google.com/books?id=t9jHCZsBR1oC.  
2. ^ Birmingham, Stephen (1968). The Right People. Little, Brown. p. 326. http://books.google.com/books?id=Sg2xAAAAIAAJ.  
3. ^ Buck, Albert H. (1909). The Bucks of Wethersfield, Connecticut. Stone Printing and Manufacturing Co.. pp. 120–3. http://books.google.com/books?id=DxE7AAAAMAAJ.  
4. ^ [1] 1986 interview with Louis Auchincloss

• Other information verified/rectified and/or amplified from Who’s Who in America 2002, Marquis Who’s Who, Providence, NJ, 2001, ISBN 0837969638 is: full name, date of birth, date of graduation from the University of Virginia and admission to the New York Bar, war service, employment history and honorary degrees.