Dinner at Antoine’s was published by Julian Messner in 1948 and became one of the bestselling novels of the postwar era, selling over two million copies in hardcover and many more in paperback. The novel is set during Carnival season in New Orleans and uses the legendary Antoine’s restaurant — the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the United States — as both setting and symbol for the layered, ritualized world of Creole society that Keyes depicts with obsessive detail.
The plot is a murder mystery wrapped in a social novel: a prominent socialite is found dead during a dinner at Antoine’s, and the investigation that follows exposes the hidden currents beneath the polished surface of New Orleans high society — old money and new money, Creole and American, Catholic and Protestant, the dozens of fine distinctions that structure the city’s social hierarchy. Keyes deploys her intimate knowledge of New Orleans customs (she lived in the city for years and was accepted into its inner circles) to create a social world of extraordinary specificity.
The novel’s appeal lay in its combination of glamour, mystery, and authentic local color: readers felt they were being given insider access to a world of wealth, beauty, and sophistication that actually existed. Keyes’s descriptions of food, clothing, architecture, and social ritual are meticulous — she researched obsessively, and the novel includes recipes from Antoine’s kitchen. The murder investigation provides narrative momentum, but the real pleasure is immersion in a meticulously rendered world.
Collecting Dinner at Antoine’s
First edition (Julian Messner, New York, 1948): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $25–$75
- Without jacket: $5–$15
- Book club editions: $3–$8