Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American lawyer, novelist, historian, and essayist. He is best known as a prolific novelist who parlayed his firsthand knowledge into dozens of finely wrought books exploring the private lives of America's East Coast patrician class . His dry, ironic works of fiction continued the tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton. Gore Vidal said, "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." Born in Lawrence, New York, Auchincloss was the son of Priscilla Dixon and Joseph Howland Auchincloss. His paternal grandfather, John Winthrop Auchincloss, was the brother of Edgar Stirling Auchincloss and Hugh Dudley Auchincloss .
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