Originally best known for his Mr. Moto spy stories, he achieved popular success and critical respect for his satirical novels, winning a Pulitzer Prize for The Late George Apley in 1938.

[1] One of his abiding themes was the confining nature of life in America's upper class and among those who aspired to join it.

Marquand's life and work reflected his ambivalence about American society and especially the power of its old-line elites.

The last is especially notable for its satirical portrayal of Harvard anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner, whose Yankee City study attempted (and in Marquand's view, dismally failed) to describe and analyze the manners and mores of Newburyport.

Several characters in these novels are motivated by a sense of duty to aid the war effort, though they are past draft age and unsure of the value of their contribution.

He forgave the upper crust classmates who snubbed him as a Harvard student, relationships he satirized in H.M. Pulham, Esq and The Late George Apley.

[10] The Late George Apley, Wickford Point, H.M. Pulham, Esquire, So Little Time, Repent in Haste and B.F.'s Daughter were published as Armed Services Editions during World War II.

A search of the [Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature] indicates that Marquand had 111 short stories published in various magazines, mostly in the Saturday Evening Post, from 1921 through 1947, of which 18 appear in Four of a Kind, Haven's End and Thirty Years.