Our hearts were young and gay book
Special Collections Blog
Program for Philadelphia premiere of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay
For the past several months, I have been privileged enough to work with the Bryn Mawr oral histories as part of my work for The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education. The oral histories are comprised of hundreds of aged cassette tapes, containing interviews, speeches, and lectures with Bryn Mawr alumnae, professors, staff, and other members of the college people. Although they are not available to the general at the moment, my job includes listening to the tapes and digitizing them. The long-term purpose is that they will one day be a part of a general digital archive. In the meantime, I want to share some of the fun, surprising, and enlightening facts I have learned about Bryn Mawr through my work.
Today, I listened to a speech by Emily Kimbrough, Class of , which she delivered at the Senior Dinner for the Class of Her speech was riotously funny, and after I finished listening, I decided to look up her alumna file. It turns out that Emily Kimbrough
Our Hearts Were Immature and Gay
Yes, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimborough are off to Europe! It’s their first solo trip abroad, and as skittery 19 year olds, they are extremely excited. They contain planned the trip for a year, and have scrimped and saved a whole $80 for their tickets (now around $1k). They wave goodbye to anxious parents, batting away their counsel like pesky flies, and trip off to start their adventure in Montreal. Of course, despite the new travelling outfits and the brave faces, they are actually conclude nervous wrecks. But they don’t enjoy to admit this to anyone, or to each other.
Over the course of the trip, they manage to receive stuck on a grounded ship, narrow measles, party with HG Wells, receive locked in Notre Dame and accidentally stay in a house of ill-repute. Just like today’s reality TV teenagers, they are naïve and incompetent and ever so slightly annoying. But you somehow can’t support but find them quite endearing.
And apparently lots of other people found them endearing too. Our Hearts Were Juvenile and Gay spent several weeks in the US bestseller ch
Some new book discoveries are so exciting that you can’t support but want to tell everyone about them, I think that might be a little how Simon felt when he wrote about Cornelia Otis Skinner. Certainly it was his enthusiasm that had me rushing off to buy not one but three Cornelia Otis Skinner books and begin to read one right away. I was quite delighted in the editions that arrived too, this one such a sweet little vintage copy from the mid ’s with awesome little illustrations.
Cornelia Otis Skinner, an American actress, writer and screenwriter co-wrote Our Hearts were Immature and Gay with her pleasant friend Emily Kimbrough, a memoir about their travels in Europe in the ’s. It is difficult to see where Kimbrough’s collaboration is exactly as the book is written in Skinner’s first person narrative. None of that seems important however as the book is full of charm and humour, and both women come across quite hilariously full of adorably lovable quirks and eccentricities.
Having finished college Cornelia and Emily embark on a European tour which they possess planned for some time. Th
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough
Tess Press. Hardcover. pages.
Review:
In the early &#;s, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough, freshly graduated from Bryn Mawr, took a transatlantic voyage to England and then to Paris. As far as travel memoirs are concerned, this does not fall into the camp of intrepid daring or visiting obscure corners of the earth. On the scale of adventure, it was perhaps the equivalent of the backpack-and-hostel trip my friend and I undertook in France when we were college students, except Skinner and Kimbrough&#;s trip was much longer and was without 21st century conveniences such as planes and internet cafes. Cornelia&#;s parents build appearances in England and in Paris, careful to let the young women have their independence, but thankfully on-hand for various health crises (a bout of German measles, bedbugs) and nice hotel meals.
The memoir is told completely from Cornelia&#;s first-person perspective &#; though Emily is credited for remembering most of it. Cornelia and Emily&#;s ship departs from