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The Roaring Twenties

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub GinMany thanks to Marion Meade, author of Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin, who has kindly provided the following introduction.

The 1920s was a golden age of fiction and poetry when hardly a month went by that critics did not discover some brand-new genius. “The literary business,” reported critic Malcolm Cowley, “was booming like General Motors.” Suddenly the national literature found itself rocked by creative explosions: the great novelist-god Sinclair Lewis whose Main Street became a huge commercial success selling three million copies; elegant stylists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway; the high-wire acts of experimental poets like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

Throughout the decade, there was no shortage of literary gods.

But where were the literary goddesses? [Marion Meade on the Roaring Twenties]

 

AbeBooks is pleased to offer first editions by some of the most prolific women writers of the twentieth century. AbeBooks offers a wide selection of titles from these leading female American authors.

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Edna Ferber

So BigSo Big
Edna Ferber

Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, So Big is widely regarded as Edna Ferber's crowning achievement. A rollicking panorama of Chicago's high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler's daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $7.00 - $850.00
Signed Copies:
$850.00

 

CimarronCimarron
Edna Ferber

Restless Yancey Cravat, a pioneer newspaper editor and lawyer, settles in Osage, a muddy town thrown together overnight when the Oklahoma territory opens in 1889. To this place he brings his wife Sabra, a woman both conventional and well-bred. Against all odds, Sabra develops a brilliant business sense. She makes a success of the newspaper, a success that ultimately leads her to Congress. Through Sabra's eyes we see the violent frontier collide with resentful Indians, the sodbusters tame the prairie, and the sudden fortune of a lucky few.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $1.25 - $755.00
Signed Copies:
$125.00 - $600.00

 

Show BoatShow Boat
Edna Ferber

Edna Ferber's Show Boat appeared as a novel in 1926 and was adapted for the stage in 1927. It has been in almost constant production since that time and is an American classic.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $3.95 - $2,500.00
Signed Copies:
$647.00 - $2,500.00

 

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

Renascence and Other PoemsRenascence and Other Poems
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Treasury of 23 works by American poet renowned for the lyric beauty of her early works. In addition to the title poem, this collection includes Interim, Sorrow, Ashes of Life, Three Songs of Shattering, The Dream, When the Year Grows Old, and others, including six sonnets. Alphabetical lists of titles and first lines.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $14.00 - $2,750.00

 

The Harp-Weaver and Other PoemsThe Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
Edna St. Vincent Millay

This book won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, making St Vincent Millay the first woman to ever receive the award. An early suffragette and political activist, she was lauded for her sensitive and poetic portrayals of womanhood and female sensuality.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $850.00 - $3,500.00

 

The Harp-Weaver and Other PoemsThe Princess Marries the Page. A Play in One Act
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Maine-born poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) wrote this play in 1918 for the Provincetown Players, while she was living in Greenwich Village. It was not published until 1932.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $5.00 - $140.00

 

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Dorothy Parker

Enough RopeEnough Rope
Dorothy Parker

Parker published her first light verse in Enough Rope (1927) and Death and Taxes (1931), volumes marked by an elegant economy of expression, sophisticated cynicism, and irony. These were followed by the short-story collections Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933), containing her single most famous story, Big Blonde. Parker scripted films in Hollywood from 1933 to 1938 and in 1937 covered the Spanish Civil War for the New Masses. In collaboration with others she also wrote two Broadway plays: Close Harmony (1924), with Elmer Rice, and Ladies of the Corridor (1953), with Arnaud d'Usseau.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $4.00 - $1,250.00

 

Laments for the LivingLaments for the Living
Dorothy Parker

The first of only two short story collections by Dorothy Parker. The 13 stories include The Sexes, You Were Perfectly Fine, A Telephone Call and the masterly Big Blonde which won the 1929 O. Henry Award. Dorothy Parker (1893- 1967), poet, short story writer, critic and member of the renowned Algonquin Hotel Roundtable, was best known to her contemporaries as The New Yorker's tart - tongued book reviewer, Constant Reader.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $8.00 - $400.00
Signed Copies:
$400.00

 

Here LiesHere Lies
Dorothy Parker

Collected for the first time are the stories which have contributed to Dorothy Parker's fame - about half of her entire literary product, not counting book reviews, over a period of 12 years.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $2.90 - $1,200.00
Signed Copies:
$550.00 - $1,200.00

 

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Zelda Fitzgerald

Save My the WaltzSave Me the Waltz
Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald lived a charmed life which mirrored the American tastes for music, culture, art and high living in the twenties. In keeping with the tone of the stories they wrote, she and F. Scott became characters of the period--he, the handsome, witty, charming author married to a glamorous girl named Zelda and both living life as though it were one great party.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100 |$100 +
First Editions: $850.00 - $3,500.00

 

The Collected WritingsThe Collected Writings
Zelda Fitzgerald

This comprehensive collection of Zelda Fitzgerald's work puts the Jazz-Age heroine in illuminating literary perspective. The volume includes Zelda's only published novel, Save Me the Waltz, an autobiographical account of the Fitzgeralds' adventures in Paris and on the Riviera; her celebrated farce, Scandalabra, eleven short stories; twelve articles; and the letters she wrote to her husband over the span of their courtship and marriage, revealing the couple's loving and turbulent relationship.

Price Range: $1 - $50 | $50 - $100
First Editions: $11.66 - $55.00

 

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