Exit Lady Masham
Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, 1983. Signed First Edition. Leather hardbound. Fine / No dust jacket issued. Item #5357
In Fine condition, with only a slight touch of bumping to the corners. Signed by Louis Auchincloss. Features gold-gilded page edges, marbled end sheets, sewn-in pages for durability, and a satin page marker. Bound in fire-engine-red leather with an elegant gold-leaf filigree design. Aside from the minor corner wear, this volume presents beautifully; a true publisher’s calling card for fine bookmaking. An excellent gift or a addition to a growing personal library.
Set in early eighteenth-century England during the reign of Queen Anne, this historical novel transports readers into the geopolitical tensions between Britain and France over the Spanish throne, with unexpected appearances from notable historical figures, including Jonathan Swift, famed author of "Gulliver’s Travels" and "A Modest Proposal." At its heart, the novel also explores the complexities of female friendship and relationships that transcend class divisions and historical conflict.
Louis Auchincloss, like Edith Wharton and Henry James, wrote extensively about class identity, aristocracy, and the rituals of polite society. He once described Versailles as “a Kafka-like nightmare of royal bureaucracy.” Auchincloss admired modern writers John Updike and Tom Wolfe and even the notoriously cranky Norman Mailer, famously telling Mailer after a disagreement, “We put on black ties and go out to silly parties in the evening, and we publish our wet dreams. So what the hell?”
Despite frequently chronicling the manners of the upper class, Auchincloss was politically outspoken, once describing the Bush family as “a family of giant shits.” This did not prevent him from accepting the National Medal of the Arts from President George W. Bush, explaining that he accepted the honor from a sitting president of the United States, an honor he felt he could not refuse. His biographer, Christopher Dahl, described Auchincloss as “too prolific for his own good,” a claim borne out by a career that produced more than sixty books.
Price: $75.00 other currencies