Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American lawyer, novelist, historian, and essayist. He is best known as a novelist who parlayed his experiences into books exploring the experiences and psychology of American polite society and old money. His dry, ironic works of fiction continue the tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton. He wrote his novels initially under the name Andrew Lee, the name of an ancestor who cursed any descendant who drank or smoked.
Early life
Born in Lawrence, New York, Auchincloss was the son of Priscilla Dixon and Joseph Howland Auchincloss. His brother was Howland Auchincloss and his paternal grandfather, John Winthrop Auchincloss, was the brother of Edgar Stirling Auchincloss and Hugh Dudley Auchincloss. He grew up among the privileged people about whom he would write, although, as he put it, "There was never an Auchincloss fortune…each generation of Auchincloss men either made or married its own money". He attended St. Bernard's School, 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.
Career
Auchincloss was an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell from 1941 to 1951. He joined the Naval Reserve as an ensign on December 4, 1940 and was promoted to lieutenant on December 1, 1942. After taking a break to pursue full-time writing, Auchincloss returned to working as a lawyer, first as an associate and then as a partner 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.
Literary career
Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society. Among his books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. The Rector of Justin is the tale of a renowned headmaster of a prep school like the one he attended, Groton School, trying to deal with changing times. In the early 1980s, Auchincloss produced three novels which were not centered on the New York he knew so well, i.e. The Cat and the King, set in Louis XIV's Versailles, Watchfires, concerned with the American Civil War, and Exit Lady Masham, set in Queen Anne's England. Auchincloss would remain close to New York again, however, in his later fiction writing. Gore Vidal said of his work: "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."
Personal life
In 1957, Auchincloss married Adele Burden Lawrence, the daughter of Florence Irvin Lawrence and Blake Leigh Lawrence. Her grandfather was prominent industrialist James A. Burden II and her great-grandmother was Vanderbilt heiress Emily Thorn Sloane White. Adele was an artist, environmentalist and later became a deputy administrator of the New York City Parks and Recreation Department. Together they had three children:
Andrew Sloan Auchincloss, a lawyer who married Tracy Lee Ehrlich in 1999.
John Winthrop Auchincloss II, a lawyer who married Dr. Tracy Pennoyer, sister of architect Peter Pennoyer, in 1988.
Love without Wings: Some Friendships in Literature and Politics
The Style's the Man: Reflections on Proust, Fitzgerald, Wharton, Vidal, and Others
The Man Behind the Book: Literary Profiles
Woodrow Wilson
Theodore Roosevelt
A Voice from Old New York: A Memoir of My Youth
Adaptations
Auchincloss's The Great World and Timothy Colt was adapted for television in an episode of the Climax! series. Composer Paul Reif adapted Portrait in Brownstone into an opera upon which he was working at the time of his death; it has remained unperformed.
