The Reason Why by Elinor Glyn

Dodo Collections brings you another classic from Elinor Glyn, ‘The Reason Why.’

 

People often wondered what nation the great financier, Francis Markrute, originally sprang from. He was now a naturalized Englishman and he looked English enough. He was slight and fair, and had an immaculately groomed appearance generally-which even the best of valets cannot always produce. He wore his clothes with that quiet, unconscious air which is particularly English. He had no perceptible accent-only a deliberate way of speaking.

 

Elinor Glyn began her writing in 1900, starting with a book based on letters to her mother, 'The Visits of Elizabeth'. And thereafter she more or less wrote one book each year to keep the wolf from the door, as her husband was debt-ridden from 1908, and also to keep up her standard of living. After several years of illness her husband died in 1915.

 

Early in her writing career she was recognised as one of the pioneers of what could be called erotic fiction, although not by modern-day standards, and she coined the use of the world 'It' to mean at the time sex-appeal and she helped to make Clara Bow a star by the use of the sobriquet for her of 'The It Girl'.

 

On the strength of her reputation and success she moved to Hollywood in 1920 and in 1921 was featured as one of the famous personalities in a Ralph Barton cartoon drawn especially for 'Vanity Fair' magazine.

 

A number of her books were made into films, most notably 'Beyond the Rocks' (1906), which starred Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson, and she was a scriptwriter for the silent movie industry, working for both MGM and Paramount Pictures in the mid-1920s. In addition she also had a brief career as one of the earliest female directors.