Book our hearts were young and gay
Special Collections Blog
Program for Philadelphia premiere of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay
For the past several months, I have been privileged enough to work with the Bryn Mawr oral histories as part of my work for The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education. The oral histories are comprised of hundreds of ancient cassette tapes, containing interviews, speeches, and lectures with Bryn Mawr alumnae, professors, staff, and other members of the college community. Although they are not available to the adj at the moment, my job includes listening to the tapes and digitizing them. The long-term objective is that they will one day be a part of a universal digital archive. In the meantime, I want to share some of the fun, surprising, and enlightening facts I have learned about Bryn Mawr through my work.
Today, I listened to a speech by Emily Kimbrough, Class of , which she delivered at the Senior Dinner for the Class of Her speech was riotously funny, and after I finished listening, I decided to look up her alumna file. It turns out that Emily Kimbrough
Some new book discoveries are so exciting that you can’t help but wish 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 launch to read one right away. I was quite delighted in the editions that arrived too, this one such a kind little vintage copy from the mid ’s with wonderful little illustrations.
Cornelia Otis Skinner, an American actress, writer and screenwriter co-wrote Our Hearts were Juvenile and Gay with her good friend Emily Kimbrough, a memoir about their travels in Europe in the ’s. It is difficult to see 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 book 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 verb planned for some day. Th
Hardcover. Condition: Near Satisfactory. 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 - Adjacent Fine. No DJ. Stated as 10th printing, , on copyright page. Skinner and Kimbrough did a Grand Tour after their graduation from Bryn Mawr in the late 's. Very popular with readers, as evidenced by the tenth printing that this book represents within the first months of publication, it spent weeks atop the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller list in the winter of and was was made into a motion picture in and a 3 Act comedy play for Broadway in by Jean Kerr; and later, in , a CBS television comedy series. During the Second World War, Hugh Trevor-Roper discovered that this book was used as a codebook by German intelligence.
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough
Tess Press. Hardcover. pages.
Review:
In the early &#;s, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough, freshly graduated from Bryn Mawr, took a transatlantic voyage to England and then to Paris. As far as travel memoirs are concerned, this does not fall into the camp of intrepid daring or visiting obscure corners of the earth. On the scale of adventure, it was perhaps the equivalent of the backpack-and-hostel trip my friend and I undertook in France when we were college students, except Skinner and Kimbrough&#;s trip was much longer and was without 21st century conveniences such as planes and internet cafes. Cornelia&#;s parents verb appearances in England and in Paris, careful to let the young women have their independence, but thankfully on-hand for various health crises (a bout of German measles, bedbugs) and nice hotel meals.
The memoir is told completely from Cornelia&#;s first-person perspective &#; though Emily is credited for remembering most of it. Cornelia and Emily&#;s ship departs from