Louis Auchincloss

How did the families who live on Manhattan's Upper East Side get to where they are today? As much a penetrating social history as it is engaging fiction, East Side Story tells of the Carnochans, a family whose Scottish forebears establish themselves in New York's textile business during the Civil War. From there they quickly move on to seize prominent positions in the country's top schools and Manhattan's elite firms. As the novel unfolds, family...

Twenty-three biographical essays on writers admired by the award-winning author of The Education of Oscar Fairfax. For Louis Auchincloss, life and letters are not two things but one. It therefore comes as no surprise that when he writes about writers, their lives are considered as closely as their works. He takes what today is a refreshingly unpopular position: that the artist and his art cannot be teased apart, that biography of criticism and criticism...

A cat may look at a king, says an old proverb. The king is the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, whose fabled court at Versailles was the wonder of Europe; the cat is the watchful chronicler, Louis de Rouvroy, second duc de Saint-Simon, author of the famous Memoirs which are the definitive record of Louis' reign. Auchincloss has conceived his novel as an extension of the Memoirs, in which Saint-Simon reveals his own story-as well as a great deal about...

From a New York Times–bestselling author, short stories of the privileged class, spanning a century of New York history. He is our sublime master of manners, our "most astute observer of moral paradox among the affluent" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), and "one of the essential American writers" (Kirkus). Now, in his fifty-seventh book, Louis Auchincloss delivers a brilliant collection of ten new, previously unpublished, stories; once again, he unfailingly...

The offices, penthouses, and suburban chateaux of New York are the setting for Louis Auchincloss's The Dark Lady. Spanning three decades from the 1930s to the McCarthy era, the novel chronicles a powerful woman's rise and the human toll it exacts. In a world where birth and style count nearly as much as wealth, Elesina Dart is supremely equipped to star. Lovely, well-born, bright, even moderately talented as an actress, Elesina seems perversely bent...

The author of False Gods offers eight stories looking into the lives of the wealthy, but troubled, elite. Set in various decades throughout twentieth century, this entertaining short story collection reveals the inner lives of America's upper classes in the polished, elegant prose that is Louis Auchincloss's signature. The intricate balance of power in a marriage, the artist's hunger for inspiration, the responsibilities of privileged youth on the...

At the time of his death, Louis Auchincloss-enemy of bores, self-pity, and gossip less than fresh-had just finished taking on a subject he had long avoided: himself. His memoir confirms that, despite the spark of his fiction, Auchincloss himself was the most entertaining character he has created. No traitor to his class but occasionally its critic, he returns us to his Society which was, he maintains, less interesting than its members admitted. You...

The author of The Vanderbilt Era examines sixteen famous friendships, from Boswell and Johnson to Hawthorne and Melville. This delightful series of short essays explores friendship in its various forms, from true intimacy to professional detente between rivals. The friendships, literary and political, span two continents and three centuries-Boswell and Johnson, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Richelieu and Father Joseph, FDR and Harry Hopkins, Edith...

Widely considered Louis Auchincloss's greatest novel, The Rector of Justin is an astute dissection of the social mores of the Northeast's privileged establishment. The story centers on Rev. Frank Prescott, the charismatic founder and rector of a prestigious Episcopal school for boys. With laser-sharp insight, Auchincloss delivers a prismatic portrait of this commanding and complicated man through the eyes of those who knew-or thought they knew-him...