The paperback series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, based on the blogs posted here, continues with the publication today of Volume IV, covering 1923, on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book formats. Signed copies will be available at Riverstone Books, Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA, next week.
1923 offers four weddings and two funerals, an Egyptian curse, and a chance to stop Adolf Hitler! What more can you ask for in one year?!
“Such Friends” at the recent Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books
In addition, Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. English novelist Virginia Woolf is turning her short story, “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street,” into a novel. American writer Gertrude Stein, living in Paris, is getting more recognition in the States. New York freelance writer Dorothy Parker is still writing light verse but also expanding into short stories.
The format of each book in the series lets you dip in and out, follow a favorite author, or read straight through from January 1st to December 31st.
Sample pages from Volume III of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
On the occasion of “Such Friends” fourth book launch, I will make the same offer I have in the past: If you live on any Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus route, I will hand-deliver your personally signed copy.
Collect all four!
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume IV—1923
Later this month I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Oh no! All those bookish friends of yours couldn’t figure out that what you were really hankering for was“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through III covering 1920 through 1922!
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s—Volume I, 1920
Easily available in print or e-book format on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. However, if you prefer signed copies, wander on over to Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill. Or contact me directly at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
The reason you are so keen to get your hands on all three volumes of “Such Friends” is clear from what you’ve heard people saying about it:
My wife and I were reading your Such Friends…out loud to each other and laughing a lot.”
–Cliff, Osher Lifelong Learning friend
Everyone is reading “Such Friends”:
Donnelly’s clever day-by-day organization allows her to range widely among many artists while her use of the present tense creates a sense of immediacy—’you are there.’ This book will provide great pleasure to anyone interested in figures of Modernism and of Twenties popular culture: Eliot, Joyce, Pound, Woolf, Yeats, Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Parker, Benchley, et al.”
—another Kathleen, Facebook friend
Here’s an example of my clever organization:
Sample pages from “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
Your lovely book arrived yesterday and I’ve already devoured most of it. It’s a very clever way of dealing with so many literary giants in…their most important years. Although ideal for a popular audience there is much that I did not know (and was delighted to learn) even though I spent a wasted youth and much of my dotage studying most of them.”
—Joseph, Australian friend
And my previous offer still stands: If you are anywhere near a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus route, I will hand-deliver your signed copies. Get in touch! kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
Next month I will be talking about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
So I thought I’d turn this #shamelessselfpromotion posting over to the fans:
Such Friends: The Literary 1920s presents colourful, diary-like snippets, skillfully woven together, from the daily lives of writers, poets and artists of the Irish Literary Renaissance, the Bloomsbury Group, the Americans in Paris, and the Algonquin Round Table in New York.”
—Dr. Ann Kennedy Smith, “My Books of the Year,”
Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society, 1890-1914;
It’s a lot of fun skipping around to different dates and events to see what was going on at particular times during the year.”
—Jim, Irish theatre fan
Interior of Volume III
What a treasure-trove this work is. You make it seem alive. The gossip is fresh! These little stories humanize the great geniuses. Thanks for doing this work.”
I look forward to the gossip and insights you have curated about what was going on a century ago.”
—Hedda, Bloomsbury fan
Love your stuff. I inhale it like…wildflower smells!”
—Marie, Semester at Sea fan
You have such a nice way of making history feel closer to us—letting us know and care about these people.”
—Dr. Barry, Ohio academic fan
Such fun! This is eavesdropping across the past century.”
—Don, James Joyce fan
Thank you, fans! And my previous offer still holds. If you live on any Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus line, I will hand deliver your signed copies to you. Email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
Happy holidays!
Fans reading “Such Friends,” Volume II
Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Taking a Thanksgiving break from posting what was happening in the literary world 100 years ago, today we would like to wish all our “Such Friends” a Happy Thanksgiving!
In the U. S.—and for some reason, also in the U. K. (Why?!)—tomorrow is known as Black Friday.
Forget it. Stay home and watch the USA beat the England team in the first round of the World Cup (2 pm EST on Fox).
USA v England, World Cup 2022
Instead, go out Saturday to your local shops and celebrate Small Business Saturday.
If you are lucky enough to live anywhere near the wonderful neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA, stop by the new location of Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue and pick up your signed copy of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 to 1922, are all there.
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume III—1922
What? You asked at your local bookstore and they didn’t have them?! Well, you march right back in there and tell them to email me (kaydee@gypsyteacher.com) and I will be happy to deliver. No supply chain issues here.
Everybody is reading “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
So you want to make your holiday purchases at a small business, but you’re stumped as to what to get for those bookish friends of yours? You know who their favorite authors are, but you don’t know which books they’ve already read.
They haven’t read this! “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s makes the perfect present for friends and family with a literary inclination. The dip-in-and-out format, designed by Lisa Thomson, makes it easy to digest the year in small bursts, or read straight through from January through December.
Sample page layout from Volume III
My original offer still holds—if you live anywhere on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus line, I will personally deliver your signed copy.
We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season, and we are looking forward to 1923…Ooops! 2023…
Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions. I would be happy to supply this book to your local bookstore as well.
Time to start thinking about the annual task that dare not speak its name—[Whisper] holiday gift giving!
Let’s say that you have some friends and/or family on your list who you know are book readers. Real books. Not just online listicles.
But which books have they read? Which authors’ biographies have they sought out? You don’t know.
I guarantee you they haven’t yet read “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I (1920), II (1921) and certainly not the newly available Volume III (1922).
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume III—1922
Even your non-bookish friends will be enticed by the informal layout of “Such Friends,” designed by Lisa Thomson (LisaT2@comcast.net). You can dip in and out or settle in to read through the whole 12 months.
Sample interior of “Such Friends”
Now you can give them the gift of gossip about their favorite early 20th century writers and artists in either print or e-book formats from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, or in the form of signed copies from Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA.
What’s that you say? Amazon has such long delivery times, you’re afraid your well-planned gifts will be sitting in a truck until January?
We can get you copies of any or all volumes of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s—signed copies, at our direct sale discount—in just a few days. We’ve got plenty of inventory and a handy post office.
And if you live on any Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus route, I will personally deliver your signed copies to you.
So email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com and check a few friends or relations off that gift list now!
Early in the new year I will be talking about The Centenary of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at the University of Pittsburgh, and The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Another gift for your bookish friends, Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
What a perfect time to visit your local independent bookstore!
If you are lucky enough to live near Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, you could stop by to say hi to our “such friends” at Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue for their celebrations, 10 am to close.
While there, you could pick up signed copies of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921, which are collections of the blogs that are posted on this site about what was happening 100 years ago.
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s—Volume I, 1920
And you could also buy some of Riverstone’s terrific Independent Bookstore merchandise!
Merchandise available at Riverstone Books
Remember—everyone is reading “Such Friends”!
Everyone reading “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s—Volume II, 1921
P. S. Follow this blog to receive updates on the progress of Volume III about the literary milestone year of 1922, due out this summer. Or email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com for more information.
In June I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris before and after The Great War at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Carnegie-Mellon University.
In Ireland, at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, still run by one of its founders, Lady Augusta Gregory, 69, the company is finishing up, with a matinee and evening performance today, the run of a double bill including A Pot of Broth by one of its other founders, Irish poet William Butler Yeats, 56. The Abbey has been performing this little one act about gullible peasants since it was written over 15 years ago.
Throughout the country, violent atrocities are committed by the Irish Republican Army and the British Black and Tans, while in Dublin, in a huge leap forward for Irish independence, the government of the Irish Free State is finally coming into being.
Newspaper headline, December 8
*****
In England, near Oxford, Yeats is encouraged by the news of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, giving Ireland, including 26 of the island’s 32 counties, Dominion status in the British Commonwealth. He writes to a friend that he expects the Irish parliament, the Dail, will ratify the treaty, but
I see no hope of escape from bitterness, and the extreme party may carry the country.”
With the establishment of the Irish Free State, Yeats and his wife Georgie, 29, are thinking of moving back to Dublin in the new year with their two children, Anne, 2 ½, and the recently christened Michael Butler Yeats, four months old.
In Sussex, Virginia, 39, and her husband LeonardWoolf, 41, have come to their country home, Monk’s House, for the holidays.
The Hogarth Press, the publishing company they have operated out of their home in the Richmond section of London for the past four years, is steadily growing. In total they published six titles this year, a 50% increase over last.
A book of woodcuts by a friend of theirs, Roger Fry, 55, that they brought out just a few months ago is going in to its third printing.
They have hired an assistant, Ralph Partridge, 27, who was at first helpful. Now he works in the basement, sleeps over during the week and has a bad habit of leaving the press and metal type dirty, which drives Leonard crazy. Partridge’s profit-sharing deal has increased from last year, but is only £125.
Before they came down here to ring in the new year, the Woolfs had a visit from their friend, one of their former best-selling writers, Katherine Mansfield, 33. They discussed excerpts from a new work, Ulysses, by Irish novelist James Joyce, 39, to be published in Paris in a few months. Mansfield agrees that it is disgusting, but she still found some scenes that she feels will one day be deemed important.
Katherine Mansfield
About three years ago, Virginia and Leonard were approached about publishing Ulysses, but they rejected it. They don’t regret their decision.
*****
In France, Paris has become home to over 6,000 Americans, enjoying being let out of the prison of Prohibition back home.
Writer Gertrude Stein, 47, who has lived here for almost 20 years, has been laid up recently after minor surgery. She is still writing, working on Didn’t Nelly & Lilly Love You, which includes references to her birthplace, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and that of her partner for the past 14 years, Alice B. Toklas, 44, Oakland, California, and how the two of them met in Paris.
The author at Gertrude Stein’s house in Allegheny, Pennsylvania
Because she recently visited the nearby studio of another American ex-pat, painter and photographer Man Ray, 31, who just moved here last summer, Gertrude works into the piece “a description of Mr. Man Ray.“
*****
In America, New York free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 28, is attending, as usual, the New Year’s Eve party hosted by two of her friends from lunches at the Algonquin Hotel—New York World columnist Heywood Broun, 33, and his wife, journalist Ruth Hale, 34. Their party is an annual event, but bigger than ever this year because it is being held in their newly purchased brownstone at 333 West 85th Street.
Parker notes that they are directly across the street from one of the buildings that she lived in with her father.
Building across the street from the Brouns’ brownstone
Dottie is here alone. Her friends don’t expect her husband, stockbroker and war veteran Eddie Pond Parker, 28, to be with her. They joke that she keeps him in a broom closet back home.
She’s enjoying talking to one of her other lunch buddies, top New York Tribune columnist Franklin Pierce Adams [always known as FPA], 40, who is professing his undying love for Parker. While sitting next to his wife and keeping an eye on a pretty young actress in a pink dress.
All the furniture except for some folding chairs has been removed to make room for the 200 guests and a huge vat of orange blossoms [equal parts gin and orange juice, with powdered sugar thrown in]. No food or music. Just illegal booze.
As the turn of the new year approaches, the guests join the hosts in one of their favorite traditions. Dottie and the others each stand on a chair.
At the stroke of midnight they jump off, into the unknown of 1922.
Thanks to Neil Weatherall, author of the play, The Passion of the Playboy Riots, for help in unravelling Irish history.
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and in print and e-book formats on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
Early in the new year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses at the Osher Lifelong Learning programs at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
On February 3, 2022, we will be celebrating the 148th birthday of my fellow Pittsburgh native Gertrude Stein, at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill. To register for this free event, or to watch it via Zoom, go to Riverstone’s website.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
The communication between editor Maxwell Perkins, 37, and his hit novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 25, has continued as publication of Scott’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, draws closer.
Last month Perkins had written to Fitzgerald about a passage in which one of the characters makes disparaging remarks about the Bible. Max wasn’t offended, but Scribner’s has never published such heresy.
Maxwell Perkins
Max told Scott that he is concerned that some readers will believe Fitzgerald feels that way, writing,
I think I know exactly what you mean to express…but I don’t think it will go. Even when people are altogether wrong, you cannot but respect those who speak with such passionate sincerity.”
Fitzgerald, working from a rented office in St. Paul, Minnesota, to avoid his wife and newborn daughter at home, took offense, replying:
If this particular incident was without any literary merit…I should defer to your judgment without question. But that passage belongs beautifully to that scene.”
That statement worried Perkins. He wrote back,
Don’t ever defer to my judgment. You won’t on any vital point, I know, and I should be ashamed if it were possible to have made you, for a writer of any account must speak solely for himself.”
Fitzgerald agreed to compromise. A little. He changed “Godalmighty” to “deity,” cut “bawdy,” and edited “Oh, Christ” to “Oh, my God.”
But now Fitzgerald has sent Perkins a whole new ending, which his wife Zelda, 21, hates. Scott has cabled Max to get his opinion:
ZELDA THINKS BOOK SHOULD END WITH ANTHONY’S LAST SPEECH ON SHIP—SHE THINKS NEW ENDING IS A PIECE OF MORALITY. LET ME KNOW YOUR ADVICE IF YOU AGREE LAST WORD OF BOOK SHOULD BE I HAVE COME THROUGH OR DO YOU PREFER PRESENT ENDING I AM UNDECIDED JACKET IS EXCELLENT”
So today Perkins cables him,
I AGREE WITH ZELDA,”
and then sits down to write a more detailed explanation in a follow-up letter:
I think she is dead right about that…[The intended satire] will not of itself be understood by the great simple-minded public without a little help. For instance, in talking to one man about the book I received the comment that Anthony was unscathed; that he came through with his millions and thinking well of himself. This man completely missed the extraordinarily effective irony of the last few paragraphs.”
Perkins sends off the letter and edits the copy for the dust jacket so as to underline the irony.
Dusk jacket of The Beautiful and Damned
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and in print and e-book formats on Amazon. For quicker delivery, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
Early in the new year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses at the Osher Lifelong Learning programs at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Manager as Muse, about Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
Virginia, 39, and Leonard Woolf, 41, owners and operators of the Hogarth Press in Richmond, are quite pleased with the sales of their friend’s book, Twelve Original Woodcuts by Roger Fry, just turned 55, which they hand-printed, bound and published themselves. The original press run sold out in two days!
Self-portrait by Roger Fry
Not the same for Poems, by their brother-in-law Clive Bell, 40. The art critic is thrilled that anyone wants to publish these 17 poems, written over the past 12 years, including “To Lopokova Dancing,” an ode to the star of the Ballets Russes, Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 30.
*****
In the West End of London, another one of the Woolfs’ friends, economist John Maynard Keynes, 38, is returning to the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. Since early November he has not missed a performance of the Ballets Russes’ The Sleeping Princess with Lopokova as Aurora.
The production itself has gotten terrible reviews; one calling it a “gorgeous calamity.” And Keynes’ friends in Bloomsbury, once so enamored of the ballet company for its avant-garde choices, have been turned off by this traditional re-staging of a three-act ballet from the end of the last century. They have even soured on Lopokova.
Lydia Lopokova in The Sleeping Princess
Serge Diaghilev, 49, impresario of the Ballets Russes, is losing his shirt on this one. After a disastrous first night he was seen to break down in tears. He received a huge advance against box office income from the Alhambra Company to mount this spectacle. Hardly anyone is coming and it has to run the full three months.
But none of this bothers Maynard. He’s not coming back for the Tchaikovsky score, re-orchestrated by Igor Stravinsky, 39. Or the outlandish sets and costumes.
He returns every evening because he finds himself, much to his surprise and that of all his friends, absolutely entranced by Lydia.
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and in print and e-book formats on Amazon. If you need gifts for Christmas, I’ll hand deliver them tomorrow anywhere on the Allegheny County Port Authority bus routes. Email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
Early in the new year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses at the Osher Lifelong Learning programs at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
The newlyweds Hadley, 30, and Ernest Hemingway, 22, just arriving from Chicago, check in to the Hotel Jacob. The clerk hands them a note from fellow Chicagoan, Lewis Galantiere, 26, assistant to the American Commission to the International Chamber of Commerce, requesting that they meet him for dinner at Michaud’s, a short walk away.
Map of Paris with Hotel Jacob indicated in red
And so their new life begins.
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and in print and e-book formats on Amazon. If they can’t get it to you in time for gift giving, I can. Email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
Early in the new year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses at the Osher Lifelong Learning programs at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
SuchFriends Blog 