Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize- winning author who chronicled middle-class life in small town and suburban America through the prism of such issues as sex, adultery, mortality and loss, died today. He was 76.

Updike died after a battle with lung cancer, according to an e-mail from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House.

A prolific writer, he authored more than 50 novels and volumes of short stories, poems, essays and criticism. Updike captured “the whole mass of middling, hidden, troubled America,” most notably in the four-book Rabbit series, which follows Everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom through the second half of the 20th century. He won the Pulitzer Prize for two novels in the tetralogy: “Rabbit Is Rich” (1981) and “Rabbit at Rest” (1990).

Some critics, like John Cheever, considered Updike “the most brilliant and versatile writer of his generation.” He was called America’s greatest poetic novelist, who skillfully wove metaphor, lyricism and detail into his narratives. Others say that his prose is superficial and overly descriptive to hide the fact that his work is about nothing.

Many of his books centered on middle-class domestic life, including marriage, adultery and divorce. Updike often peppered these novels with graphic descriptions of sexual intercourse -- to the point of gratuitousness, said some critics.

Talk of the Town

John Hoyer Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, on March 18, 1932, about 50 miles from Philadelphia. He won a scholarship to Harvard University, where he wrote and drew cartoons for the Lampoon humor magazine. Updike married Radcliffe art student Mary Pennington in 1953.

After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard in 1954, he studied drawing in England on a year’s fellowship. Updike then landed a job at his dream publication, The New Yorker. He wrote the “Talk of the Town” column for two years; dozens of his pieces would appear in The New Yorker during the next five decades.

Updike found New York too expensive and overwhelming, so he moved to Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1957, immersing himself in the middle-class small town existence he wrote about. Updike published his first volume of poetry, “The Carpentered Hen” in 1958. The collection of light verse whimsically touched on modern values, sports and journalism.

The Rabbit Tetralogy

Most of his 1950s and 1960s work was set in Olinger, a fictional Pennsylvania town based on his boyhood home, including his first novel, “Poorhouse Fair” (1959), in which the elderly inmates of a poorhouse 20 years in the future rebel against the prefect’s compulsive need for order. Updike also set several short story volumes in Olinger, such as “Pigeon Feathers” (1962), about adolescent fears of marriage and kids.

The 1960 publication of “Rabbit, Run” made Updike an acclaimed author. Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is a depressed, blue- collar 26-year-old who misses his glory days as a high school basketball star. Updike wrote three sequels, each revisiting Rabbit a decade later. He received negative reviews for “Rabbit Redux” (1971), in which Rabbit confronts the social unrest of the late 1960s when a runaway hippie moves in.

Updike won critical acclaim, the 1982 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Circle Critics Award for “Rabbit Is Rich.” In the 1970s, the middle-aged Rabbit enjoys a comfortable life selling Japanese cars during the oil crisis but must deal with his irresponsible son Nelson.

An overweight Rabbit, 55, suffers a heart attack and must deal with Nelson’s cocaine addiction, the Pan Am Flight 103 crash in Lockerbie, Scotland, and finally his own death in “Rabbit at Rest” (1990), also a Pulitzer winner.

Chronicled Adultery

He published his only No. 1 best seller with “Couples” in 1968. The novel explored adultery among 10 couples in Tarbox, a fictional New England town that served as the setting for many of his novels and short stories of the period. Time magazine ran a cover story on Updike and “Couples’” frank sexual descriptions. He looked at marriage and adultery in the novels “A Month of Sundays” (1975) and “Marry Me: A Romance” (1976).

During this period, Updike divorced his first wife, Mary, and remarried Martha Bernhard in 1977.

Updike received a one-year Fulbright fellowship to Africa in 1973. This trip inspired 1978’s “The Coup,” narrated by the exiled leader of a fictional African nation.

Bleaker Tone

Many of Updike’s later works had a bleaker, more detached tone and greater use of historical and scientific research.

A divinity professor battles with a computer scientist who tries to prove God’s existence by computer in “Roger’s Version” (1986). His 1983 collection of criticism, “Hugging the Shore,” cemented his reputation as a prolific, insightful literary critic and earned him the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism.

Some critics consider Updike a pioneer in short story writing, citing three volumes about his alter ego, Henry Bech. Updike also won the National Book Award for “The Centaur” (1963).

His 1984 “The Witches of Eastwick” became a movie starring Jack Nicholson, Cher and Susan Sarandon. The sequel, “The Widows of Eastwick,” was published in 2008.

In addition to his wife Martha, survivors include four children from his first marriage: Elizabeth Pennington, David Hoyer, Michael John and Miranda, and three stepchildren.

To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Burke in New York at hburke2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 27, 2009 14:08 EST