“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume IV—1923 is now available!

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 1^st to December 31^st.

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.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends” at The Second Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books

We interrupt this chronology of what was happening in the literary world 100 years ago to remind you that this Saturday, May 13^th, 2023, is the second Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books.

And “Such Friends” will be there—at Booth No. 22 in Writers’ Row, to the left just as you come in the main entrance—with copies of all three volumes of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, covering 1920 to 1922, as well as copies of Manager as Muse:  Maxwell Perkins’ Work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe.

“Such Friends” volumes I through III

All books will be available at a substantial Festival discount and signed by the author. All four books are also available at regular retail price in both print and e-book format at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill and on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

For all you fans of the first three volumes, there will be a special surprise—Stay tuned!

So come to the Festival at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary on Highland Avenue in East Liberty—admission is free with lots of parking available.

See you Saturday…

Everyone is reading “Such Friends”

Next month I will be talking about Fitzgerald and Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Happy Independent Bookstore Day this Saturday!

We interrupt this chronology, “Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, for a tip of the hat to all our local independent bookstores.

This Saturday, April 29, 2023, if you’re lucky enough to live near Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA, you could wander on over to Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue and get your signed copy of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Waiting for you are Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922, along with great Independent Bookstore Day merch.

Riverstone Books merch

If you’re not near Squirrel Hill, go to your local independent bookstore and demand that they carry all three volumes now! (Tell them to email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.)

All three volumes of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s

And if you live anywhere near a Pittsburgh Regional Transit route, I’ll come sign them for you.

While you’re out and about, stop by your local independent café also.

If you are not lucky enough to have an independent bookstore near you—start one! (And you can still order “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.)

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in 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 or Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 19, 1923, Vienna, Austria

When he moved here almost two years ago, to have psychoanalytic treatment from world-renowned doctor Sigmund Freud, 66, American publisher Scofield Thayer, 33, decided he could still oversee his literary magazine in the States, The Dial, from afar.

Scofield Thayer

To do so he has depended on unofficial “agents” in European capitals who are on the lookout for talent, such as the American ex-pat poets Ezra Pound, 37, in Paris and T. S. Eliot, 34, in London.

Also in the UK, Thayer has relied on a British writer, Raymond Mortimer, about to turn 28, who has a large circle of literary friends. Through the aristocratic hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell, 49, Mortimer has met many writers, including novelist Virginia Woolf, 41.

Raymond Mortimer

Recently Mortimer told Thayer that he was expecting to get a short story from Woolf, titled “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street.” She doesn’t want it to be published in Britain,

probably because she has done a portrait of someone in it, at least that is my guess,”

Mortimer writes. Maybe Ottoline?!

Virginia Woolf, taken by Ottoline Morrell

Thayer has received the story, with Mortimer’s note,

I enclose Mrs. Woolf’s story (very badly typed, as she said)…I think it is most exquisite, & hope you will like it. I am coming to think her the best writer we have.”

After reading it, Thayer totally agrees. Today he sends the story on to the New York office of The Dial so they can calculate and issue the correct payment. Probably about £60. “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” should appear in the magazine this summer.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April, 1923, Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London

They all make fun of her. The group of writers and artists who live in Bloomsbury have not been welcoming to Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 31, current lover of their friend, economist John Maynard Keynes, 39.

Lydia Lopokova

Novelist Virginia Woolf, 41, has mocked Lydia’s broken English, in a letter to her sister, painter Vanessa Bell, 43: 

Maynar like your article so much, Leonar,”

referring to Virginia’s husband Leonard, 42.

Lydia has been annoying Vanessa by stopping by on Sunday afternoons just to chat. Vanessa doesn’t have time to chat. She has two sons, ages 15 and 12; an estranged husband; and her partner, Duncan Grant, 38, to look after.

Vanessa has painted a not particularly flattering portrait of Lydia, which is included with Vanessa’s work in this month’s London Group Show. She knows that Duncan is also working on one.

At least Vanessa got good reviews for the show. Her other Bloomsbury friend, art critic Roger Fry, 56, has a one-man show at the Independent Gallery and his portrait of Lydia has been chastised. The London Observer criticized its “cloying prettiness.”

Vanessa did the portrait of Lydia so Maynard would buy it, but he refused. Vanessa feels that Maynard has never really liked her painting.

Lydia Lopokova by Duncan Grant

N.B.:  Duncan Grant’s portrait of Lydia Lopokova was bequeathed to King’s College, Cambridge, by John Maynard Keynes in his will. The whereabouts of the other two portraits are unknown.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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.ukin both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, March 20, 1923, Art Institute of Chicago, Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois

Last year, English art critic Clive Bell, 41, published an influential essay, “Since Cezanne,” which discussed Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, also 41: 

…Picasso is a born chef d’ecole. His is one of the most inventive minds in Europe…His career has been a series of discoveries, each of which he has rapidly developed.

A highly original and extremely happy conception enters his head, suggested probably by some odd thing he has seen. Forthwith he sets himself to analyze it and disentangle those principles that account for its peculiar happiness. He proceeds by experiment, applying his hypothesis in the most unlikely place.”

Today, Picasso’s first solo show in the United States, “Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso,” opens here, put on by the Arts Club of Chicago in the galleries they lease from the Art Institute.

Catalog for “Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso”

Picasso’s paintings have been exhibited in the States before, as part of the 1913 Armory Show, which opened in New York City but then toured here at the Art Institute, and moved on to Boston. Two years ago the Arts Club included two of his paintings in a group show.

This time, from his home in Paris, Picasso has given specific instructions to the organizers about how to display the 53 original drawings, ranging from 1907 to just last year.

Tete de jeune homme by Picasso

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, late February, 1923, East 40th Street, New York City, New York

Henry R. Luce, 24, knows how this day is going to pan out.

Henry R. Luce

Luce and his partner, fellow Yale alum Briton Hadden, just turned 25, have been planning their magazine for well over a year. Now they are coming down to the deadline to start the presses so the new magazine, Time, will appear on newsstands with a March 3^rd cover date.

Serious discussions hadn’t started until Hadden, then learning the publishing ropes from editor Harold Bayard Swope, 41, at the New York World, contacted his old buddy from the Yale Daily News, Luce, who had recently been dumped by the Chicago Daily News. He suggested they both go to work for the Baltimore News.

Briton Hadden

In late night talks they began brainstorming the concept of a weekly magazine called Facts which would condense the important news of the day for busy businessmen. Eventually, they came up with the name Time, and the slogan, “Take Time—It’s Brief.” Hadden thought it should be fun as well as informative, including news, celebrities, politics, culture and sport.

Funded by $100,000 raised from other Yale alumni, and working out of this abandoned brewery, Hadden, as editor, is overseeing the process he and Luce learned in their short publishing careers:  Get the flats together. Race over to the printer at 36^th Street and 11^th Avenue. Stay up all night with the staff writing copy to fill holes and cutting copy to make columns fit. Then write captions for the three-inch square fuzzy photos.

Within the 32 pages—including the cover featuring retiring congressman and former Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives Joseph G. Cannon, 86—were brief pieces on:

• The Kansas legislature considering a bill to make smoking illegal;
• The wife of the Pennsylvania governor beseeching Congress to put women in charge of enforcing Prohibition, which cost the country $15 million last year;
• Charges by muckraker Upton Sinclair, 44, that department stores have too strong an influence over newspapers because of their heavy advertising spends;
• Influential British art critic Clive Bell, 41, declaring that cubism is dead;
• A review of Black Oxen, the new novel by Gertrude Atherton, 65, which categorizes the writers who lunch regularly at the midtown Algonquin Hotel as “Sophisticates”; and
• A review of the hit Broadway play, Merton of the Movies, by two of those Sophisticates, Marc Connelly, 32, and George S Kaufman, 33, calling it a “skillful dramatization” of the original novel.

Newsstand price is 15 cents.

First issue of Time magazine

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This month I am talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute 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.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: You Didn’t Get What You Really Wanted for Christmas?!

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.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, January 21, New York Tribune, New York City, New York

Boni and Liveright has taken an ad in the New York Tribune to promote one of the books they are most proud of publishing late last year, The Waste Land, by American poet living in London, Thomas Stearns Eliot, 34.

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

When it was published last month, Boni and Liveright’s ad said,

The contract for The Waste Land, Mr. Eliot’s longest and most significant poem, which we have just published, was signed in Paris on New Year’s Eve and was witnessed by Ezra Pound and James Joyce. A good time was had by one and all—even the publisher.”

Not strictly true; but they did all have dinner together in Paris.

This month, the copy reads: 

…probably the most discussed poem that has been written since Byron’s Don Juan…[Clive Bell], the distinguished English writer, [has called Eliot] the most considerable poet writing in English.”

However, back in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London, Clive, 41, has told his mistress, writer Mary Hutchinson, 33, that he is sure Eliot uses violet face powder to make him look “more cadaverous.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Next month I will be talking the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, January 12, 1923, Hogarth House, Richmond, London

English novelist Virginia Woolf, 40, has just come down to breakfast, when her maid gives her some startling news,

Mrs. Murry’s dead! It says so in the paper,”

exclaims Nellie Boxall, 31.

Confused, Virginia reads the obituary in the Times, which describes her friend, New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield, 34, as having “A career of great literary promise…[Her] witty and penetrating novel reviews…A severe shock to her friends.”

Katherine Mansfield

This is definitely a severe shock to Virginia. Last year she turned down Katherine’s invitation to visit her in France, and last fall passed up an opportunity to see Katherine when she was visiting London. She always thought that she’d see her again this summer.

Katherine’s book, Prelude, was one of the first Virginia and her husband Leonard, 41, published when they started their Hogarth Press about five years ago.

More deeply, Virginia is feeling the loss of one of the few writers she felt truly close to. Katherine won’t be there to read what Virginia writes. Her rival is gone.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Next month I will be talking the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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.