Double Exposure by Gloria Vanderbilt and Lady Thelma Furness (From the library of Truman Capote)
VANDERBILT, Gloria and FURNESS, Lady Thelma. Double Exposure: A Twin Autobiography. David McKay Company: New York, 1958
Third Printing. From the library of Truman Capote, with his ownership initials on the front endpaper. Laid in is a Bonhams slip indicating that this was part of lot 1061 in “The Private World of Truman Capote” sale.
This is the dual autobiography of the famous Morgan twin sisters, Gloria and Thelma, the ‘It girls’ of the 1920s, whose names came to spell glamour, wealth, romance, and scandal. Thelma married one of the richest man of the era, and was the mistress of King Edward VIII until she made the mistake of introducing him to her good friend Wallis Simpson.
Gloria married into the Vanderbilt family, and was at the centre of the most famous custody battle of the 20th century, fighting her sister-in-law Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney for guardianship of her heiress daughter Gloria. Gloria Vanderbilt (the younger) was one of Capote’s friends from his early youth in Manhattan, a teenage swan and muse. Capote would have read this book with much interest, and would have been intrigued to find it not entirely flattering to Little Gloria. The two fell out following the publication of ‘La Côte Basque’, a story in which Vanderbilt makes a cameo appearance.
xi, 369 pp; b/w illustrations. 8vo, original cloth. Endpapers foxed. Binding cracked at title-page, but still firm. Good in good dust jacket (price-clipped; slight loss at top of spine; closed tear to spine/rear face; still bright and attractive).