Our hearts were young and gay

Hardcover. Condition: Proximate Fine. 1st Edition. Fine gray linen-like cloth on boards with gilt line drawing of a couple dancing on front and gilt lettering to spine, mildly faded. Decorated endpapers with the names of the destinations that the two young women traveled to and from. Book is tight, square, sharp-cornered and free of major flaws or markings - Nearby Fine. No DJ. Stated as 10th printing, 1943, on copyright page. Skinner and Kimbrough did a Grand Tour after their graduation from Bryn Mawr in the delayed 1920's. Very accepted with readers, as evidenced by the tenth printing that this book represents within the first months of publication, it spent weeks atop the Recent York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller list in the winter of 1943 and was was made into a motion picture in 1944 and a 3 Act comedy participate for Broadway in 1946 by Jean Kerr; and later, in 1950, a CBS television comedy series. During the Second World War, Hugh Trevor-Roper discovered that this manual was used as a codebook by German intelligence.

Some new book discoveries are so electrifying that you can’t help but long to tell everyone about them, I think that might be a minute how Simon felt when he wrote about Cornelia Otis Skinner. Certainly it was his enthusiasm that had me rushing off to buy not one but three Cornelia Otis Skinner books and begin to read one right away. I was quite delighted in the editions that arrived too, this one such a sweet little vintage copy from the mid 1940’s with wonderful little illustrations.

Cornelia Otis Skinner, an American actress, author and screenwriter co-wrote Our Hearts were Young and Gay with her fine friend Emily Kimbrough, a memoir about their travels in Europe in the 1920’s. It is difficult to spot where Kimbrough’s collaboration is exactly as the book is written in Skinner’s first person narrative. None of that seems important however as the publication is full of charm and humour, and both women come across quite hilariously full of adorably lovable quirks and eccentricities.

Having finished college Cornelia and Emily embark on a European tour which they hold planned for some time. There is much excitement, at their first independent adventure and not a little horror over th