Showing posts with label The Diary of a Lost One. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Diary of a Lost One. Show all posts

Friday, July 27, 2012

The German Bestseller in the Late Nineteenth Century

A just published book, The German Bestseller in the Late Nineteenth Century (Camden House, 2012), contains a reference to the "Louise Brooks edition" of Margarete Bohme's The Diary of a Lost Girl. The book is a collection of essays on the literature of the time.

One of the essays included in The German Bestseller in the Late Nineteenth Century is titled "Taking Sex to Market." It is by Elizabeth Boa, a UK scholar described as "One of the most respected Germanists of her generation." Boa is a scholar of modern German literature and who has written on Frank Wedekind and Franz Kafka and others.

In the footnotes to her essay, Boa references the "Louise Brooks edition" of  Bohme's bestselling book, Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (translated into English as The Diary of a Lost One, aka The Diary of a Lost Girl). It made my day when Boa described this edition as "splendid." (See below.)


The "Louise Brooks edition" of Bohme's The Diary of a Lost Girl is also included in the bibliography of this new book, which I am looking forward to getting a hold of.  

More info on "Louise Brooks edition" of The Diary of a Lost Girl can be found here. And here are a few of the other reviews of the book which have appeared since it was published in 2010.

"Long relegated to the shadows, Margarete Böhme's 1905 novel, The Diary of a Lost Girl has at last made a triumphant return. In reissuing the rare 1907 English translation of Böhme's German text, Thomas Gladysz makes an important contribution to film history, literature, and, in as much as Böhme told her tale with much detail and background contemporary to the day, sociology and history. He gives us the original novel, his informative introduction, and many beautiful and rare illustrations. This reissue is long overdue, and in all ways it is a volume of uncommon merit." -- Richard Buller, author of A Beautiful Fairy Tale: The Life of Actress Lois Moran

"Gladysz provides an authoritative series of essays that tell us about the author, the notoriety of her work (which was first published in 1905), and its translation to the screen. Production stills, advertisements, and other ephemera illustrate these introductory chapters. In today’s parlance this would be called a 'movie tie-in edition,' but that seems a rather glib way to describe yet another privately published work that reveals an enormous amount of research — and passion." -- Leonard Maltin

"Read today, it's a fascinating time-trip back to another age, and yet remains compelling. As a bonus, Gladysz richly illustrates the text with stills of Brooks from the famous film." -- Jack Garner, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

"Thomas Gladysz is the leading authority on all matters pertaining to the legendary Louise Brooks. We owe him a debt of gratitude for bringing the groundbreaking novel, The Diary of a Lost Girl - the basis of Miss Brooks's classic 1929 film - back from obscurity. It remains a fascinating work." -- Lon Davis, author of Silent Lives


Wednesday, July 14, 2010

New book about Louise Brooks ?

Seemingly, there is a new book about Louise Brooks. Or at least it is about her in part. Or at least her name is in the title. And, it was printed recently.

The book is called Ziegfeld Follies: Ziegfeld Girls, Barbara Stanwyck, Eve Arden, Lucia Pamela, Jeanne Eagels, Bessie Love, Paulette Goddard, Louise Brooks. It was published last month, is 166 pages, and can be found on amazon.com No author is given. That's a bad sign.

I haven't seen a copy of the book as of yet - though I do plan on ordering one. (Somebody has got to.) The product description offered on amazon is kinda weird. It notes that there are chapters devoted to Ziegfeld Girls, Barbara Stanwyck, Eve Arden, Lucia Pamela, Jeanne Eagels, Bessie Love, Paulette Goddard, Louise Brooks, Marion Davies, Olive Thomas, Joan Blondell, Ann Pennington, Mae Murray, Florenz Ziegfeld, Nita Naldi, Susan Fleming, Iris Adrian, Anna Held, Bird Millman, Tamara Geva, Dorothy Mackaill, Billie Dove, Paulette Duval, Yvonne Hughes, Claire Dodd, Irene Hayes, Cecile Arnold, Jean Howard, Helen Gallagher. 

It then offers an excerpt, which seems to be lifted from Wikipedia. The informational url found in the product description takes you to the Wikipedia page for Louise Brooks. Hmmm.
If I were to hazard a guess, I would think this "data-mined" book is made up of little more than material gathered from various websites. Oh boy. But that is just a guess. One never knows until one has the thing in hand. The publisher is Books LLC. According to their website, they are based in Memphis, Tennessee. Their webpage for this book is http://booksllc.net/book.cfm?id=3459533

I do believe that this "publisher" is the same entity which also recently released a version of Margarete Bohme's The Diary of a Lost One on the world. I have a copy of that - and can state that it is a very poor thing indeed. The product description found on amazon.com and on their website begins "The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text...." Well, that's an understatement. Doesn't i"numerous typos or missing text" make you feel like you simply MUST have a copy?

For better or for worse, we are likely at the dawn of a new age of such books. 

When I prepared my own edition of Bohme's The Diary of a Lost Girl, I was very careful to make sure the text of my book was the best it could be. I spent nearly a month going over the manuscript again and and again fixing typos and making corrections. And, to give it added value, I also added a 35 page introduction and more than 3 dozen vintage illustrations. My edition of Bohme's book can be found at http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-diary-of-a-lost-girl-(louise-brooks-edition)/11256621. Plus, what makes my edition so superior is that it looks a heck of a lot better than the above two books. And, it has Louise Brooks on the cover. What more could you ask for?


I am in the process of getting the book into various online "distribution channels" and even select brick-and-mortar bookstores. It should be available around the world on the various  amazon.com sites sometime soon, as well as Barnes & Noble, etc.... However, the best source for the book is direct from the printer at lulu.com

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Continueing . . .

I have continued placing inter-library loan requests and have continued visiting the library. . . . Over the last few weeks I have gathered Denishawn material from the Wasau Daily Record-Herald (from Wasau, Wisconsin) and most interestingly, the Yale Daily News (from Yale University). The students at Yale gave Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, Louise Brooks and the other members of the Denishawn Dance Company considerable coverage, including a front page article and front page review. Just a few days later, Rudolph Valentino, who was also on a dance tour of his own, visited New Haven. (Valentino was on strike against Paramount, and was touring the country with his wife, Natasha Rambova.) This would not be the first time Brooks and the Denishawn Dance Company would nearly cross paths with the silent film star.

I also gathered film material from a handful of newspapers including the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News (from Poughkeepsie, New York), Lancaster Daily Intelligencer, (from Lancaster, Pa.), Knoxville Journal (from Knoxville, Tennessee), Indianapolis Times , San Antonio Express, and Denver Post. I found some nice advertisements, and a few original reviews.

Also, of late, I have also been borrowing books. I managed to get ahold of a few vintage editions of Margarete Bohme's Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, the 1907 novel which was the basis for the 1929 film Diary of a Lost Girl. It was interesting to examine different editions. I also got ahold of Un homme en habit, the 1922 French play which was the basis of the 1927 film, Evening Clothes.

Here is a scan of the remarkable cover of the first edition of Bohme's book.

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