The Extra Woman: How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like It
Joanna Scutts
Nov 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by C.S.E. Cooney
headphones
Audiobook
10 hr 12 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
Want a 1 hr 1 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
Despite multiple waves of feminist revolution, today's single woman is still mired in judgment or, worse, pity. But for one brief exclamatory period in the 1930s, she was all the rage. Marjorie Hillis was working at Vogue when she published the radical self-help book Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman. With Dorothy Parker-esque wit, she urged spinsters, divorcees, and old maids to shed derogatory labels, and her philosophy became a phenomenon. From the importance of a peignoir to the joy of breakfast in bed (alone), Hillis's tips made single life desirable and chic. Now, historian and critic Joanna Scutts reclaims Hillis as the queen of the "Live-Aloners" and explores the turbulent decades that followed, when the status of these "brazen ladies" peaked and then collapsed. The Extra Woman follows Hillis and others like her who forged their independent paths before the 1950s saw them trapped behind picket fences yet again.
About the author
Joanna Scutts is the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Women's History at the New York Historical Society and a contributor to the New Republic, the Guardian, and elsewhere. She lives in New York.
C. S. E. Cooney launched her voice-acting career narrating short fiction for Podcastle, the world's first audio fantasy magazine. She is a performance poet, singer-songwriter, and fantasy author whose collection Bone Swans has garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Locus Magazine.
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
