Louis Auchincloss

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, both of whom he much admired. Auchincloss told Ron Martinetti of American Legends website: "I have first editions of Edith Wharton around me as I write. I gave a hundred of her letters that I collected over the years to Yale. Her prose is as lucid and polished as any in American fiction. I admire James enormously. There is not a word of his I haven’t read. [James] is the great American writer of all time." He wrote his novels initially under the name Andrew Lee, the name of an ancestor who cursed any descendant who drank or smoked.