Inventing the It Girl
How Elinor Glyn Created the Modern Romance and Conquered Early Hollywood
by Hilary A. Hallett
Pub Date 26 Jul 2022 |
W. W. Norton & Company, Liveright
Biographies & Memoirs | Nonfiction (Adult)
I am reviewing a copy of Inventing the It Girl through W.W. Norton, Liverlight and Netgalley:
Hilary A. Hallet turns the modern day novel into a subject of serious study, in this biography of pioneering celebrity author Elinor Glyn.
In 1907 Elinor Gwynn a society darling shocked her English Peers with the publication of Three Weeks an intensely erotic novel that launched her to international fame and infamy. Historian Hilary A. Hallett traces Glyn’s meteoric rise for the first time, beginning where most romance novels end: with her marriage into the English gentry class in 1892.
After her husband Clayton gambled their fortune away Glyn boldly became the first commercially successful writer to challenge the sexually straightjacketed literary code. As she churned out novels, she consorted with world leaders from St. Petersburg to Paris to Cairo before movie producers lured her to California in 1920. There, Glyn crafted the romantic aesthetic of Hollywood’s golden Silent Age, coining the term “- a quality of magnetism she projected onto actresses like Clara Bow. Deep archival research, has allowed Hallett presents Glyn as an icon of sexual and professional independence who would encourage new generations to chase their own desires wherever they led.
I give Inventing the It Girl four out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
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