Schoolgirl

New York: Horace Liveright. Good. 1929. 5th printing. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [worn book, bumping and light fraying to cloth at all corners, small nick in cloth at right-hand edge of front cover, spine slightly turned, covers a little grubby; internally clean, hinges a little tender but still intact]. This first novel by Carman Barnes, based on her own experiences in various Southern boarding schools, was published when she was 16 ("just a schoolgirl herself") and helped make her into an overnight sensation. Before she hit nineteen, she had already published a second novel, collaborated on a stage adaptation of "Schoolgirl," and been whisked off to Hollywood under contract to Paramount as a writer -- and was soon (so the story went) tapped for potential movie-stardom as well. One news item, from early 1931, reported that she was ensconced in a hillside bungalow "writing her own story -- the story in which she will appear in the capacity of star.") For about ten minutes, she was even touted as "the next Clara Bow" (although that seems to have been just a part of the studio's campaign to keep the troublesome Miss Bow in line). In the end, however, her only on-screen appearance was in a brief dramatic scene in a promotional trailer made for a Paramount sales convention, and she never achieved a writing credit of any sort. When her contract expired after six months she was sent packing, with an L.A. Times columnist commenting rather ruefully that "one feels a trifle sorry for the girl herself in all this, since her adventure seems to be leading nowhere." On her way to Nowhere, though, she at least did exactly what many a frustrated writer did following an abortive Tinseltown experiences: she wrote a "Hollywood novel," "Mother, Be Careful!", published in 1932. After one more novel ("Young Woman," a "Schoolgirl" follow-up), she wasn't heard from again until coming out with one final book in 1946. . (Inventory #: 15537)