Pauline A. Plimpton, 93, Author Of Works on Famed Relatives

Pauline Ames Plimpton, who had a late-blooming career as a writer that startled but not did not surprise her famous literary offspring, George Plimpton, died on Saturday at her home in New York City. She was 93.

Her family said the cause was circulatory illness.

As the daughter, wife and mother of famous men, Mrs. Plimpton spent most of her life in the shadow of her father, Oakes Ames, the Harvard botanist; her husband, Francis T. P. Plimpton, the lawyer and diplomat, who died in 1983, and her son, George, the multifaceted editor of The Paris Review.

But at age 79, as her son put it on Saturday, "she suddenly came out from underneath" and started writing books, concentrating, appropriately enough for a novice writer, on what she knew best: her family.

Among the eight books she turned out over the next dozen years was one about her father: "Oakes Ames, Jottings of a Harvard Botanist," (Botanical Museum of Harvard, 1979); one about her husband: "The Plimpton Papers, Law and Diplomacy" (University Press of America, 1985), and even one about her father-in-law, a wide-ranging literary collector: "A Collector's Recollections, George Arthur Plimpton" (Columbia University Library, 1992).

Mr. Plimpton said he had not been surprised at his mother's literary emergence.

"As a young girl," he said, "she kept wonderful diaries."

Mrs. Plimpton, a graduate of Smith College, was also on the boards of Planned Parenthood, the Institute for World Affairs and the Public Education Association.

In addition to George, she is survived by two other sons, Francis T. P. Plimpton Jr. of Ormond Beach, Fla., and Oakes A. Plimpton of Boston; a daughter, Sarah Plimpton of New York; a brother, Amyas Ames of Syosset, L.I., seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.