GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady, published in 1925 by Boni & Liveright is a comic novel written by American author Anita Loos. The story follows a young blonde gold-digger and flapper named Lorelei Lee during "the bathtub-gin era of American history." Published the same year as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Carl Van Vechten's Firecrackers, the lighthearted work is one of several notable 1925 American novels focusing on the carefree hedonism of the Jazz Age.
Originally serialized as sketches in Harper's Bazaar in 1925, Boni & Liveright republished Loos' sketches in book form in November 1925. Although dismissed by critics as "too light in texture to be very enduring," the book garnered the praise of many writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, William Faulkner, and H. G. Wells. Edith Wharton praised Loos' satirical work as "the great American novel" as the character of Lorelei Lee embodied the avarice and self-indulgence that characterized 1920s America during the presidencies of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
Loos' book was the second-best selling title of 1926 in the United States and a runaway international bestseller. It was printed worldwide in over 13 languages, including Russian and Chinese. By the time Loos died in 1981, the work had been printed in over 85 editions and adapted into a 1926 comic strip, a 1926 Broadway play, a 1928 silent comedy, a 1949 Broadway musical, and the well-known 1953 film adaptation of the musical starring Marilyn Monroe.
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
$10.00