AUCHINCLOSS, LOUIS

born Sept. 27, 1917, Lawrence, N.Y., U.S. in full Louis Stanton Auchincloss American novelist, short-story writer, and critic, best known for his novels of manners set in the world of contemporary upper-class New York City. Auchincloss studied at Yale University from 1935 to 1939 and graduated from the University of Virginia Law School in 1941. He was admitted to the New York state bar that same year and began a legal career that would last until 1986. For his first novel, The Indifferent Children (1947), Auchincloss used the pseudonym Andrew Lee, but by 1950 he was publishing stories under his own name. Noted for his stylistic clarity and skill at characterization, he became the prolific chronicler of life in the rarefied world of corporate boardrooms and brownstone mansions. As a novelist, Auchincloss was less interested in the excesses and intrigues of his characters than he was in their formative influences and personal limitations. Several of his best novels, including The House of Five Talents (1960) and Portrait in Brownstone (1962), examine family relationships over a period of decades. Others, notably The Rector of Justin (1964) and Diary of a Yuppie (1987), are studies of a single character, often from many points of view. Auchincloss frequently linked the stories in his collections by theme or geography, as in, for example, Tales of Manhattan (1967) and Skinny Island (1987), which are set exclusively in Manhattan. Later works include the novels Tales of Yesteryear (1994) and Education of Oscar Fairfax (1995) and the short-story collection Three Lives (1993). Auchincloss also published critical works on his stylistic antecedents Edith Wharton and Henry James, among other writers.