Alison Stewart Lurie was born on September 3, 1926, in Chicago,[1] and raised in White Plains, New York.

[4] Due to complications with a forceps delivery, she was born deaf in one ear and with damage to her facial muscles.

[5] She attended a boarding school in Darien, Connecticut,[5] and graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1947 with a bachelor's degree in history and literature.

[13] Lurie's novels often featured professors in starring roles, and were frequently set at academic institutions.

"[16] Literary critic John W. Aldridge gave a mixed assessment of Lurie's oeuvre in The American Novel and the Way We Live Now (1983).

He notes that Lurie's work "has a satirical edge that, when it is not employed in hacking away at the obvious, is often eviscerating", but also remarks that "there is … something hobbled and hamstrung about her engagement in experience".