Blind Date

“What must a girl do to be popular?”

Cynthia Carter couldn’t get a date to her town’s Valentine’s dance and has just been stood up in the worst way.  A blind date scuttled off after pretending to be called away, only everyone could see he had been holding down the receiver on the landline.  What happens next makes up the plot of Blind Date by Vida Hurst, published in 1931  with dust jacket art by Mach Tey.

This is the second Vida Hurst book to be covered on this blog, the first being No Such Girl.  Like No Such Girl, Blind Date features an incredibly naive young protagonist making groan-inducing choices, and is set away from the east coast.  No Such Girl is set in Michigan, and Blind Date is set in Missouri.  How many other 1930s romance novels are set in Kansas City, Missouri?  After having recently visited there for a literary-themed wedding, I think Kansas City is a great choice for a romance novel.

Our three main suitors are Kenton Field, Roddy Nelson, and Houston Harrison.  Kenton is the boy next door, Roddy is the date-dodger and Houston is the family friend.  Of the three suitors, Cynthia can’t get rid of Houston quickly enough.  She describes him as, “the sort who, after knowing a girl for years, would ask permission to hold her hand” and scoffs at his beautiful “feminine” handwriting.  The turning point with Houston is when Cynthia turns him down for an evening out, and then, upon being asked to go, Cynthia’s older sister turns him down too.  Considered an old maid in her late twenties(!), Hollis stands up for herself and refuses to be “second choice.”  Houston is then stuck going with the sisters’ MOM.  After learning that Cynthia isn’t interested and Hollis doesn’t want to be second choice, Houston changes his tactics and before the novel ends he and Hollis are married and expecting a baby.  Maybe Cynthia was wrong in her previous estimation of Houston.

Houston wouldn’t be the only character Cynthia misjudges.  After her friends dismiss Roddy following his landline stunt, Cynthia continues to pine away for another two hundred pages.  Deciding she would like to be the sort to impress men, our protagonist embarks on a self-improvement mission.

In Cynthia’s quest for fashion greatness, Blind Date has a subplot I hadn’t read before in a 1930s romance: a cautionary tale about store credit charges.  Cynthia opens a line of credit and immediately charges $434.95 in clothing purchases.  If that sounds like a lot, take inflation into consideration too.  According to one inflation calculator, that would be about $6,890 today!  Her inability to pay this off makes her creditor’s escalation a driving force of the plot.  She finds out what it means to have her credit ruined in town at other stores, and almost loses her job.  After having learned hard lessons about buying clothing out of her price range, Cynthia takes out a high interest loan and makes good on her debt.  She also decides to wear only black, white, blue, and pink, for whatever that’s worth.

Despite limiting herself to four clothing colors and getting into debt, the most cringe-worthy choices Cynthia makes are about Roddy Nelson.  He’s jealous and sleazy throughout the novel.  He lies about being engaged to another woman and just about everything else.  Cynthia’s infatuation with him ends in a change of heart, and she instead ends up with the boy next door who had been listening to her problems for the length of the novel.  Just to drive the point about fashion home, Cynthia is wearing a dark plain flannel bathrobe (color not specified!) for her happy ending with Kenton.

Blind Date was made into a 1934 movie by the same name, starring Ann Sothern, Neil Hamilton, and Paul Kelly.

Copies of Vida Hurst’s works are available for purchase here including Blind Date.

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Kaleidoscope Books

2017

2011

Back in the fall of 2010, I had a part-time student job that really wasn’t me.  On the surface, I couldn’t complain: I worked with great people, I had a reasonable supervisor, and the pay was decent for a part-time student job.  The work itself was the poor fit, but for the record I did my job dutifully until the day Jeff Pickell saved me from it.

Kaleidoscope Books was my go-to place that fall.  I had long talks with Jeff, the owner, about anything and everything as I escaped from some of the pressures of my first semester in grad school.  For everyone else who has been drawn to Kaleidoscope, we all know that my descriptions of Jeff, his store, and the good times there can’t do any of them justice.  Having a bad day?  I would have recommended going to Kaleidoscope.  A good day?  Kaleidoscope.  Not any kind of day but just generally putzing about the Kerrytown area?  Kaleidoscope.

Luckily for me, Jeff had an opening because his previous assistant’s first book had been published and was a serious contender for the 2011 Caldecott Medal, which it went on to win.  Those are some pretty large shoes to fill, but Jeff was willing to take a chance on a twenty-two year old grad student who rambled on a bunch about 1920s romance novels.

I started working odd hours in the store late that fall and went to work there regularly as Jeff’s Online Business Manager starting in January of 2011.  We took our descriptions and listings seriously, but always had fun with them.  They’d say something like “this book about orange cats, a favorite subject of a Kaleidoscope employee…” or “the owner and his assistant disagree on whether this book is in near fine or fine condition – purchase now and cast your vote.”  Together we listed nearly 1,000 items that year.

In 2013, I moved out of state but tried to visit Jeff at Kaleidoscope Books anytime I was in Michigan.  My most recent visit to Kaleidoscope Books was in November 2016, when Jeff surprised me with some news.  He was retiring, and a majority of the store was going to auction in 2017.

Kaleidoscope Books was all about its people, and its books.  Everyone was welcome and friends stopped by regularly.  Needless to say, I also purchased some really special books from Kaleidoscope.  In December of 2016, my boyfriend surprised me with a final few books from the store.

I had said goodbye to the store as I had known it back in November, but I couldn’t miss the auction.  I needed to see the store off in style.  So, I woke up early one unseasonably pleasant February morning and headed to the Saline Fairgrounds with my mom and Daniel.  Nearly the whole gang was there.  It was bittersweet, seeing some familiar faces I hadn’t seen in nearly four years.  Even the old weatherbeaten outdoor sign was in attendance, one of many, many items in three full warehouses.  My mom was ready to go before I was, and Daniel stayed with me so I could get the visual closure of seeing an auctioneer selling items table by table.  It was my first auction, and a lot to wrap my head around.  Finally, I said farewell (for now!) to Jeff, Deborah, and Isaac before taking the picture at the top left of this post.  The top right picture is from 2011.

It was tough saying goodbye to a place that means so much to me.  But this also marks the beginning of Jeff’s much-deserved retirement, a new chapter and the next adventure.  Today, June 5th, is Jeff’s birthday and this post is for him.  Happy Birthday, Jeff!  And thank you, for everything.

… Missing the experience of buying a book from Kaleidoscope Books?  Good news!  Kaleidoscope Books may no longer be in Kerrytown, but a curated subset of its inventory is available online at Abebooks!  The digital storefront can be found at: https://www.abebooks.com/kaleidoscope-books-collectibles-ann-arbor-mi/55605396/sf.

Books on Wheels: Opportunities in Library Work

Career novels don’t get much cooler than Books on Wheels by Mary R. Lingenfelter.  It’s no secret that I work one department over from my library’s wonderful Bookmobile Department and that I’ve been lucky enough to join the bookmobile on about half a dozen trips, mainly school visits.  The technology on the bookmobile has certainly changed since Books on Wheels’ 1938 publication date, but the premise of delivering library services to the community outside of library walls rings true today.

Books on Wheels is part of the Kitson Careers Series, as the editor of the series was Harry D. Kitson, Ph.D., at the Teachers College of Columbia University.  The Kitson Careers series seems to be published around the same era as the Dodd Mead series (think Marian-Martha from 1936) but well before the mid-century Avalon career series (Kitsy Babcock: Library Assistant, 1958 – yes, I finally found her!) or the Julian Messner Career-Romances for Young Moderns series (Nancy Runs the Bookmobile, 1956, and Jinny Williams: Library Assistant, 1962).  Books on Wheels: Opportunities in Library Work includes about twenty pages of back matter with additional resources including a glossary, a list of accredited library schools, and suggestions for further reading.  I wouldn’t recommend these resources as being up to date, but that’s a no-brainer after nearly eighty years.  For example, the section on library school reads, “except in rare cases, library schools discourage a student from attempting to carry part time work.”  Now the opposite is true, and most programs require an internship component.

Anyway, so Books on Wheels brightened one of my days this winter.  Not only is the blue and orange Stephen Voorhies cover art spectacular, but I opened my copy of this book to find it signed by the author!  Best Yuletide Wishes 1938!  To the person who found and sent me this marvelous book, again, thank you.

Our protagonist, Barbara Minton, starts the story off by declaring to her long time boyfriend that she’s decided to pursue a career in librarianship.  David reluctantly gives Barbara his blessing, put out that this will delay their marriage.  Barbara wraps up her undergraduate degree in a chapter flat, sticking near home to save on expenses, while working at the local public library trying her hand in different departments.  She even works part time at her college library for a semester before packing up for Columbia.  Of course Barbara chooses Columbia as the author and editor of this book were working there at the time of publication.

Barbara begins Columbia the fall after she graduates from college and it is the first time she’s been far from home.  She falls behind and resolves her academic troubles by building a strict hour-by-hour schedule.  Seriously, who does this?  Our career novel helpfully dedicated a full page spread to Barbara’s schedule, presumably so young readers could go by her stellar example.  Please.

An honest and up to date (post-2009) career series book focusing on librarianship might have the protagonist search fruitlessly for professional work for six months to a year post-graduation.  Of course, this is not that book and Barbara graduates with a job.  She has an inside connection in that the public library where she had worked previously has a temporary position opening.  The part about accepting a two-year position with possibility but no guarantee of extension is reflective of a lot of the current entry-level library profession.  Her starting salary is $1200 a year, or $20,363 in 2016 dollars.

Barbara’s main conflicts are turbulent weather, getting the city to pass a tax for the continuation of the bookmobile services, and her relationship with David.  Barbara works tirelessly to promote the poor women drivers stereotype in this book.  Honestly, every time there is a severe weather event and everyone tells Barbara not to drive off, she does anyway and gets in an accident.  This happens multiple times throughout the book.  At one point she even gets an assistant driver to help her but then she grabs his arm on an icy hill, resulting in yet another off-road incident.

Barbara and David have various adventures throughout the book, climbing mountains and searching for artifacts.  They of course end up married at the end of Books on Wheels.  Even though Barbara will be returning to work after her honeymoon, it’s also pretty clear that she won’t be a county librarian forever.  In the final chapter, she’s already discussing how much longer she can continue working and when the library will hire and begin training her eventual replacement.  Just “not right away.”

More stories focusing on women’s experiences, including women working in various professions, can be found here.

Leap Day 2016

Happy Leap Day 2016!  On our last Leap Day, four years ago today, I posted on Laura Lou Brookman’s Leap Year Bride. 

For this year, all I had to do was find another Leap Year themed romance novel.  Within my collecting scope, I know about two definite titles that would have been PERFECT for this post.  I knew about them back around 2012 too and figured I had four whole years to track these titles down, no problem.  As of February 29, 2016, I haven’t been able to find a collectible copy of either title.  Honestly, I knew I had a small Leap Day problem by the end of 2015.

It’s okay, these things happen.  Part of the fun/charm/craziness of collecting rare books is that it doesn’t always work out as I had hoped.  Instead, I’m posting two Leap Year postcards, the left undated and the right from 1908.  Enjoy!

Better luck next time, Leap Day 2020.

Don’t be caught without a Leap Year themed read on February 29, 2020!  Find Laura Lou Brookman’s Leap Year Bride here.

Red Hair

“I  wonder so much if it is amusing to be an adventuress, because that is evidently what I shall become now.  I read in a book all about it…”  So starts Red Hair by Elinor Glyn, originally published as The Vicissitudes of Evangeline.

Even after reading Red Hair, I have so many questions.  What book or books is Glyn referring to?  This won’t be my first post on a book that pokes fun at others of the era, but I wish I knew what turn of the century novels are being spoofed.  The Vicissitudes of Evangeline was originally published in 1905 (available in the public domain!) but when was this Macaulay reprint published?  The back of the dust jacket lists other Glyn novels including Love’s Blindness (1926) and there is a gift inscription in my copy dated Christmas 1928.  My best guess is that Macaulay reprinted Red Hair in conjunction with the 1928 silent film starring Clara Bow.  Only fragments of the lost silent film are known to exist.  And finally, who is the cover artist for this edition?  There is clearly a signature on the dust jacket but I have no clue what it says.

Evangeline comes from a scandalous background and is brought up by a cruel rich guardian, Mrs. Carruthers, who plots that Evangeline should marry her nephew for inheritance purposes.  Red Hair is a series of journal entries that takes place in the weeks following Mrs. Carruthers’ sudden death.  Her nephew, Christopher Carruthers, arrives and rejects the antiquated marriage arrangement to a stranger, thus turning Evangeline out.  He then waffles a bunch, gets rejected by Evangeline, and has the bright idea to call in his charming handsome friend for reinforcements.  That friend is Lord Robert, who (spoiler alert!) Evangeline ends up marrying at the end of the novel.

The entire adventuress storyline is intentionally quite far-fetched.  Readers looking for the grand adventures of a suddenly penniless protagonist should look elsewhere.  Other characters laugh at Evangeline’s plans and Evangeline is unsure how to venture into the world with no connections or money.  Instead, she ends up staying at an oppressively boring neighbor’s home, then with a society woman who she meets through the neighbors, and finally makes it to London but can only roll out a plan to stay at a hotel very briefly.  No plans are made while all the male characters within a certain radius fawn over Evangeline and we are constantly reminded that everyone thinks she is trouble waiting to happen because of her red hair.

There are two love triangles in Red Hair and both play out with lots of drama but few real surprises.  The scandal level is fairly low in Red Hair: at one point the matronly neighbor sees Evangeline’s nightgown draped over a chair and thinks it much too thin.  There is a plot line about Lord Robert’s sickly half brother involving another inheritance squabble.  Red Hair serves as an interesting example of an early Elinor Glyn novel and predecessor to other romance novels of the decades following.

My thanks to family friend Elizabeth a.k.a. Etsy’s Grandmother’s Attic for finding this book.  I’m looking forward to our spring antiquing plans!

Copies of Elinor Glyn’s works are available for purchase here.

Saleslady

I gasped when I first saw Saleslady.  Department store novels are fascinating, and department store romances are a sub-genre I have been searching for over the years.  I had been looking intermittently for Saleslady by Harold Morrow for about a year and a half when I saw this copy at the 2014 New York Antiquarian Book Fair.  Any 1930s book collector could see the instant appeal of Saleslady.  I mean, she’s holding up underthings!  On the front cover!!  In 1932!!!

The Mach Tey cover art is a bit torn up near our protagonist’s face, but no matter.  Although I couldn’t capture it well with a picture, the cover art extends to the spine of the book so that a “Lingerie Dept.” sign is clearly visible under the title and author.

Saleslady opens with the main character interviewing and finding employment, in this case, in a department store.  Ex-Broadway girl Queenie Sullivan exudes confidence and through the tale of her landing a job at Marshall’s Department Store, we see that she is the most “high hat” character to date, even more than the main character in High Hat!  A former show girl with a questionable past, Queenie lands a job in the lingerie department.  She is immediately paired up with sensible Ida, but draws attention to herself through loud antics.  Queenie receives unwanted advances from a higher up and must navigate the treacherous waters of being supervised by a two-faced floor manager.

Saleslady is set smack in the depression and Marshall’s Department Store struggles to stay above water.  They try holding a gimmicky swimsuit sale led by Queenie.  As some modern day department stores that will go unnamed could use to learn, quality products win out over silly gimmicks, and the fictional Marshall’s sale backfired when their products proved to be defective.  Finally, Marshall’s Department Store hires Stephen Alden to turn the store around.  He starts by calling a mandatory meeting.  The store workers, who already had their paychecks cut, are clearly resentful of being called in extra unpaid hours to hear a pep talk.

At this point, the story becomes fantastical.  Stephen promotes Queenie to be his assistant and together, they produce a musical play to promote positive employee in-store behaviors.  A play depicting staff training instructions through song sounds painful.  The tale of how a department store manager can properly score a musical and how employees just all happen to perform with Broadway quality requires an abundance of suspension of disbelief.  The play is so popular that it even launches as a regular theater production for a non-department store audience!  I’ve read time travel novels that sound more plausible.

Queenie’s rise is abruptly threatened when her past resurfaces.  Her mother abandoned her at a boardinghouse and Queenie never knew her father.  Of course, as is the case in these types of romances, her father just happens to be the millionaire owner of Marshall’s department store.  Everything wraps up nicely, as these stories often do, and Queenie doesn’t even have to work a holiday season in the department store!

More department store fiction is available for purchase here, including Miss 318.

Wallflowers

Wallflowers is a 1920s romance novel classic.  Penned by the prolific Temple Bailey in 1927, this relatively widely read romance was reprinted by Grosset and Dunlap in the 1920s and by Dell as a paperback in the 1940s.

Reviewed here is the Penn Publishing Company first edition, with R. Pallen Coleman dust jacket art, complete with the publisher’s  promotional bookmark still attached.  Also, a “R.H. Macy & Co. Inc.” imprint stamp graces the title page.  A copy this beautiful and complete could only have come from one place, so my thanks are owed to Yesterday’s Gallery and Babylon Revisited Rare Books!

Unlike the past couple of 1930s romances I’ve read, Wallflowers is one of those longer, more melodramatic sagas.  When the going gets tough, the main characters turn to prayer.  Our protagonists are Sandra Claybourne (played by Jean Arthur in the 1928 silent movie adaptation!) and Theodora “Doady” Claybourne, who are living in Washington, D.C., along with their mother.

Wallflowers reflects the changing of the times, contrasting the sentimental wistfulness of yesteryear with the more modern and practical ways of the 1920s.  Sandra daydreams on balconies while Doady immediately gets a job at an antiques store and practices her image in society.  Wallflowers is but a moment in time, and the novel starts off with the hero, Rufus Fiske, reminiscing about a “bleak March day” when he had attended (Theodore) Roosevelt’s inauguration.  Bailey introduces Rufus with a nod to the past and our second hero, Gale Markham, with a nod to the future. Gale’s present moment of first seeing the twins warps into the future’s past as, “He was not aware that she had made more than a slight impression on his mind, yet years after, when he thought of her, it was as she had appeared to him then, a slender, smiling child clothed in a pink frock as became her youth.”  All that about the sister he doesn’t end up with!

Rufus Fiske and Gale Markham are as different from each other as Sandra and Theodora and they each come with their own melodramatic plot line.  Gale Markham salvages the twins’ evening at a party where Sandra and Doady awkwardly realize they are wallflowers.  He is comfortable and friendly but has a riches-to-rags story, complete with the socialite ex-fiance who is still very much in his life.  Whereas Gale, “was not handsome, was not graceful,” Rufus is described as being incredibly good looking and is used to swooning women.  Rufus’ plot involves an evil step-mother and family heirlooms, which naturally has turned him into a jaded, brooding character that wouldn’t be entirely out of place in one of today’s young adult novels.

Griselda the cat is one of the many elements that draw Sandra and Rufus’ story together with Gale and Theodora’s.  Sandra is drawn to Rufus in part because she is “enchanted” by his cat and thinks that Griselda is a cute name for the beast.  Rufus dumps both Sandra and the cat at one point, and I honestly judged him more for leaving the cat behind.  Griselda also brings Gale and Theodora together as Theodora trips and falls on a decoration that the cat had dislodged on a set of stairs.  Being a 1920s novel, Doady of course then faints in Gale’s arms.  No other ending would do.

Copies of Temple Bailey’s works are available for purchase here including Wallflowers.