The Late George Apley is a 1937

1937 in literature

The year 1937 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*January 9 - The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States.*Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets Klaus Mann.-New books:*Eric Ambler - Uncommon Danger...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by John Phillips Marquand. It is a satire of Boston's upper class

Boston Brahmin

Boston Brahmins are wealthy Yankee families characterized by a highly discreet and inconspicuous life style. Based in and around Boston, they form an integral part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment...

. The title character is a Harvard-educated WASP

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is an informal term, often derogatory or disparaging, for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of British Protestant ancestry. The group supposedly wields disproportionate financial and social power. When it appears in writing, it is usually used to...

 living on Beacon Hill

Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts

Beacon Hill is a historic neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, that along with the neighboring Back Bay is home to about 26,000 people. It is a neighborhood of Federal-style rowhouses and is known for its narrow, gas-lit streets and brick sidewalks...

 in downtown Boston.

The book was acclaimed as the first "serious" work by Marquand, who had previously been known for his Mr. Moto

Mr. Moto

Mr. Moto is a fictional Japanese secret agent created by the American author John P. Marquand. He appeared in six novels by Marquand published between 1935 and 1957. Marquand initially created the character for the Saturday Evening Post, which was seeking stories with an Asian hero after the death...

 spy novel

Spy fiction

Spy fiction, literature concerning the forms of espionage, was a sub-genre derived from the novel during the nineteenth century, which then evolved into a discrete genre before the First World War , when governments established modern intelligence agencies in the early twentieth century...

s and other popular fiction. It was a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1938. An article in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

decades later called the book the "best-wrought fictional monument to the nation's Protestant elite that we know of."

In 1947, it was adapted as a feature film

The Late George Apley (film)

The Late George Apley is a 1947 film about a stuffy, upper-class Bostonian who is forced to adjust to a changing world. It starred Ronald Colman in the title role and was based on John P. Marquand's novel of the same name and the subsequent play by Marquand and George S...

 starring Ronald Colman

Ronald Colman

Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...

.