You Can Start All Over: A Guide For The Widow And Divorcee

Seminal early self-help book from renowned author Marjorie H. Roulston, who had a varied life from minister’s daughter to fashion journalist to millionaire’s wife to widow.“THE TITLE of this book, You Can Start All Over, isn’t something dreamed up to sugar-coat an easy, overoptimistic confidence. It is the expression of a strong conviction. I believe that when life brings a devastating change, leaving one alone and desolate, one can start all over. For I have done just that, three different times, two of them for bitterly unhappy reasons.Some people never have to. I frequently meet women, and not always very young ones, who state that they are living in the same houses in which they were born and married. Not long ago, I had occasion to send flowers to the funeral of a woman in her eighties who had never lost her husband or child, had lived along at about the same financial level from the cradle to the grave, and many of whose girlhood friends were sitting right there in the front pews. Nobody seemed to think it remarkable. Nobody, that is, but me.”

Marjorie Hillis (1889-1971) worked for VOGUE for over twenty years, beginning her career as a captions writer for the pattern book and working her way up to assistant editor of the magazine itself. She was one of a growing number of independent, professional women who lived alone by choice. In 1936 she wrote LIVE ALONE AND LIKE IT, the superlative guide for 'bachelor ladies' (who became known as 'live-aloners'). It was an instant bestseller.
Three years after the book's publication, at the age of forty-nine, Ms. Hillis bid a fond farewell to the live-aloners by marrying Mr. T.H. Roulston.