"Kept Woman" 1929 DELMAR, Viña
$250
DELMAR, Viña
[303] pp.
Grosset & Dunlap
1929
7 3/4" x 5 1/4"
The follow up book to Delmar's huge, risqué, controversial best seller "Bad Girl" (1928), the story of Hubert Scott and Lillian Cory, a marriage-of-convenience couple. Hubert is a big spender (and there is also a Mrs. Scott) while Lillian is "the gin-buying, car-owning lady of leisure, a middle-class kept woman."
The initial lady writer to scandalize America was Elinor Glyn whose characters famously made love on a tiger skin. Viña Delmar followed a generation later with libertine books such as Bad Girl, Loose Ladies, and this novel. She also adapted her book The Awful Truth for Hollywood and was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination. In this scintillating story, the lead character is a “gin-buying, car-owning lady of leisure” who “buys perfume at a dollar an ounce.”