Diana Athill, an Englishwoman who wrote a series of critically lauded memoirs chronicling her romantic and sexual liaisons over much of the 20th century, but who attained international literary celebrity in her 90s with the publication of an installment about the waning of desire, died on Wednesday in London. She was 101.

Her death, at a hospice, was confirmed by Granta, her British publisher.

Ms. Athill’s renown came with “Somewhere Towards the End,” the sixth — though by no means the last — volume of her autobiography. Published in 2008, the year she turned 91, it is a meditation on the inevitable pains, and unexpected pleasures, of aging.

Jenny Diski, reviewing the volume, wrote in The Sunday Times of London, “Such a book is in itself a rare enough thing, but a book about old age written by a woman with a cold eye for reality and no time for sentimental lies is as rare as — well, as rare as a thoughtful discussion about a woman’s sexuality after the age of 60.”

Ms. Diski added, “When the wish for sex goes, Athill says cheeringly, there is space at last to gain a glimpse of who you really are apart from erotic desire.”