SOURCE: "High Polish," in The Washington Post Book Week April 9, 1967, p. 14.

An American critic and biographer, Edel is a highly acclaimed authority on the life and work of Henry James. His five-volume biography Henry James (1953-73) is considered the definitive life and brought Edel critical praise for his research and interpretive skill. In the following review of Tales of Manhattan, Edel praises the skill, the "insights" and "delicate subtleties** of Auchincloss's stories, yet the reviewer also complains of a "certain thinness" in the author's work.

Louis Auchincloss continues to tell his tales of Manhattan as an endless Arabian Nights entertainment. This is his fourth collection, and his earlier volumes, The Injustice Collectors, The Romantic Egoists, and Powers of Attorney, long ago demonstrated his ease and skill in the short story. It is perhaps his characteristic form: for his novels are also constructed on a short-story principle, as in...