Review by Booklist Review
Elinor "Nell" Glyn's life spanned eras: born in Victorian England, she witnessed the Belle Epoque in Paris, toured the front during World War I, and taught Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson how to smolder in 1920s Hollywood. Along the way, she wrote 40 books, both fiction and nonfiction, that were frank about sexual desire. Her first novel, Three Weeks (1907), about a Serbian queen who finds love and pleasure with an English nobleman, was widely panned by critics but became a global sensation--a pattern that would be repeated with almost all of her novels. By the time she arrived in Hollywood, she was a middle-aged widow but no less fabulous--she was known for her red hair, penchant for tiger-skin rugs, and dresses made by her couturier sister, Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon. The "Elinor Glyn touch" became synonymous with sex and glamour in movies, and she worked with actors and actresses who had "It," "'an inner magic, an animal magnetism.'" Hallett's biography puts Glyn's glittering influence in its historical context. It's a thoroughly readable chronicling of a woman whose influence spanned generations.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hallett (Go West, Young Women!), a history professor at Columbia University, delivers a page-turning account of the life of Elinor Glyn (1864--1943), a once prominent writer who has been largely lost to history. Glyn spent the first part of her life around the upper classes of late Victorian and Edwardian English society. She married up, cavorted with duchesses, and traveled through Europe and Egypt. By the turn of the 20th century, however, after learning of her family's mounting debts, she "leaned harder on her pen" and "sought her fortune" in romance novels. She pioneered steamy fiction in a time of heavy censorship, and was known for the "Tiger Queen'' heroine she "created and imitated" and was named after an "infamous sex scene on a tiger skin." In the 1920s, Glyn moved to Hollywood, where she honed the idea of "It" or extraordinary sex appeal, and catapulted actor Clara Bow to "It girl" fame with the film It. Hallett is equally at home chronicling the contours of Glyn's life, decaying English aristocracy, and the glamour of Hollywood, easily conjuring her subject and the events and cultural shifts that shaped her. This one brings the goods. Agent: Tina Bennett, WME. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Historian Hallett (Columbia Univ.; Go West, Young Women!) offers an engrossing biography of Elinor Glyn (1864--1943), who invented the modern romance novel and popularized the notion of the "It Girl." Glyn did not have much formal education, but she did have the run of her father's extensive library. In class-conscious 1890s England, she understood that she needed to marry into both wealth and class. She accomplished this but was disappointed by her husband, long addicted to alcohol and compulsive gambling. To support her family, she began to write racy novels with suggestive sexual content, penning her wildly popular, best-selling novel Three Weeks in 1907. Glyn's steamy love scenes were written to be suggestive but not explicit, with dominant characters possessing the magical animal magnetism she called "it." Glyn eventually moved to the United States, where she wrote and directed some movies and launched the career of Clara Bow, the original Hollywood It Girl. VERDICT Narrator Pamela Almand's consistent and well-paced delivery brings Glyn's life into focus, highlighting her evolution as a writer and an advocate for women. A perfect fit for biography listeners and those interested in the early days of Hollywood.--Joanna M. Burkhardt
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A terrific biography of a revolutionary 19th-century British author and sexual trailblazer. Inspired by her dissertation on "the sexual politics of early Hollywood," Hallett, a history professor and director of American studies at Columbia, rediscovers the overlooked literary legacy of Elinor Glyn (1864-1943). Born in the Channel Islands, she was raised by her grandmother, who molded her in the ways of British aristocracy. Despite an awareness of 19th-century "wifely duty" and Victorian ideals, Glyn's early "mistrust of womanly submission ran deep." As an adult, she bedazzled society circles with her bright red hair and green eyes. She married a wealthy landowner, birthed two daughters, and traveled extensively across Europe and Egypt, journeys the author describes in pleasingly lavish detail. A "sexual and temperamental mismatch" sunk the marriage, but not before Glyn began straying with assorted men and penning feverishly scandalous novels in the early 1900s. In time, she would become known as the "founder of the modern sex novel," even amid the strict media and censorship rules of the era. Indifferent to ostracism from naysaying British society, she defiantly continued publishing erotically focused books--including Three Weeks (1907), a massive bestseller that was translated into "every major European language"--featuring her cultural touchstone Tiger Queen, a temptress character known for bawdy escapades. Eventually relocating to Hollywood, Glyn popularized the concept of the it girl, a sobriquet for a woman with remarkable sex appeal. Renowned flapper Clara Bow was one of the first to fondly embody this moniker and openly recognized Glyn as "the original model of a new kind of sexually emancipated, professionally independent, and spiritually brave woman who inspired so many." In this appealing follow-up to her first book, Go West, Young Women: The Rise of Early Hollywood, Hallett creates a vivacious, intellectual, and fascinating narrative, and her impressive research effectively highlights an extraordinary life that aimed to "let loose the genie of women's sexual liberation." A brilliant, thought-provoking portrait of a forgotten 20th-century influencer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
