Lawyer and New York Society Novelist Louis Auchincloss Dies at 92
Within 10 years of earning a law degree from the University of Virginia and starting practice at Sullivan & Cromwell, attorney Louis Auchincloss was successful enough as an author to resign from the white-shoe New York legal partnership and make writing his full-time career.
But Auchincloss soon found that he missed being a lawyer, and went back to the “real world” of law practice at the Wall Street firm of Hawkins Delafield & Wood, where he worked as a trusts and estates attorney until his retirement in 1986. Meanwhile, the critically acclaimed novelist, essayist, biographer and editor wrote more than 60 books in a seven-decade writing career.
It concluded yesterday, when Auchincloss died at a hospital near his Manhattan home of complications from a stroke, reports the Washington Post. He was 92 years old.
Known for his complex prose, dry wit and keen eye for the nuances of New York society, Auchincloss chronicled the decline of his WASP world of power and privilege, the newspaper recounts. By the time of his death, his books offered a window into the manners and mores of a former era.
“One of the pleasures of reading him is to glimpse the sometimes bewildering mores of a bygone subculture,” the article states, pointing to a passage in The Rector of Justin in which the title character lectures two boys for taking off their ties. “When a gentleman undresses,” he says, “a gentleman goes to bed.”
