Louis Auchincloss, 1917-2010

The only book of his
that Retiring Guy has read

Link to January 28 New York Times obituary, "Louis Auchincloss, Prolific Chronicler of New York's Upper Crust, Dies at 92".

Excerpt: Although he practiced law full time until 1987, Mr. Auchincloss published more than 60 books of fiction, biography and literary criticism in a writing career of more than a half-century. He was best known for his dozens and dozens of novels about what he called the “comfortable” world, which in the 1930s meant “an apartment or brownstone in town, a house in the country, having five or six maids, two or three cars, several clubs and one’s children in private schools.”

This was the world he came from, and its customs and secrets were his subject from the beginning. He persisted in writing about it, fondly but also trenchantly, long after that world had begun to vanish.

Read the last two paragraphs of the obituary to learn what Auchincloss thinks of this observation.

Extrapolating from the number of copies linked to each bibliographic record in LINKcat, I'd say that Auchincloss' books are not owned by many libraries. Portrait in Brownstone, for example, is owned by Madison (FICTION STORAGE, ASK FOR HELP) and Monroe (IN LIBRARY).