For literary It girls, what could be a more fitting gift than the life of a glamorous iconoclast? A new edition of Paul Morand’s The Allure of Chanel (Pushkin Press), drawn from the novelist’s tête-à-tête with the designer in St. Moritz in 1946, now with illustrations by Karl Lagerfeld, captures Mademoiselle Coco in a philosophical mood—“A dress is neither a tragedy, nor a painting.” Model turned World War II spy Toto Koopman is the adventuresome beauty at the heart of Jean-Noël Liaut’s The Many Lives of Miss K (Rizzoli), while Victoria Wilson’s A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907—1940 (Simon & Schuster) captures a defining, yet little-understood (until now) luminary of Hollywood’s golden age. And the last word in grande dames is the captivating subject of Jung Chang’s Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (Knopf), on the Machiavellian turned reformer who held onto power through her sons for some forty years.
The Tinseltown memoir of the season is Anjelica Huston’s A Story Lately Told (Scribner), an enchantment-fueled account of her childhood on an Irish estate, her stormy relationship with her father (director John Huston), and her days as a model for Richard Avedon and Bob Richardson. Anthony Russell’s memoir, Outrageous Fortune: Growing Up at Leeds Castle (St. Martin’s), recalls a boyhood surrounded by a moat and a cast of eccentrics that left him “more spoiled than that a Buckingham Palace corgi.” A modernist master comes to vibrant life in Linda Leavell’s Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore (FSG), on the reclusive poet who emerged from the shadow of her mother’s influence and into the uncomfortable glare of celebrity. And Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959 (Abrams), by John Elderfield, collects the art revolutionary’s signature canvases, sprawling with color and delicate calligraphic drawing.
“I wish I could drink like a lady,” begins one of Dorothy Parker’s bawdier bons mots. Kevin C. Fitzpatrick’s Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide (Lyons Press) is a recipe-laden portal to the Algonquin Round Table—pair it with a Deco cocktail shaker for best effect. A scenester who also likes to get her party on in the kitchen will appreciate Carlo Mirarchi’s Roberta’s Cookbook (Clarkson Potter), from the Bushwick boîte, while holiday hostesses will find much to inspire in London impresario Suzette Field’s A Curious Invitation: The Forty Greatest Parties in Literature (Harper Collins), from the fancy dress ball at Manderley to Jay Gatsby’s Prohibition-era decadence. The perfect conversation starter at her next soiree? Jessica Kerwin Jenkins’s All the Time in the World: A Book of Hours (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday), a sensualist’s miscellany of Gilded Age dinner dressing customs and Edwardian treasure hunts. And finally, the ultimate stocking stuffer for a modern-day Holly Golightly: a collectible edition of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (The Folio Society), with an introduction by Jay McInerney and illustrations by Karen Klassen. Because wild things need presents, too.
The post The Perfect Gift Books
for the Literary It Girl appeared first on Vogue.