Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

A Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s

By: Cornelia Otis Skinner, Emily Kimbrough

Narrated by: Celeste Lawson

Actress Cornelia Otis Skinner and journalist Emily Kimbrough offer a lighthearted, hilarious memoir of their European tour in the 1920s, when they were fresh out of college from Bryn Mawr. Some of the more amusing anecdotes involve a pair of rabbit-skin capes that begin shedding at the most inopportune moments and an episode in which the girls are stranded atop Notre Dame cathedral at midnight. And, of course, there's romance, in the form of handsome young doctor Tom Newhall and college "Lothario" Avery Moore.

Published in 1942, the book spent five weeks at the top of the New York Times best-seller list in the winter of 1943 and was made into a motion picture in 1944.

©1942 Dood, Mead and Company, Inc.; Foreword 2004 by James Mustich, Jr. (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Fun through the years!

My mom and I read the story together so many times over the years. It reminds me of her, because it’s both funny and endearing. What a thrill to go abroad with these young girls! The first time I read it I was probably 14, and when I flew across the Pacific whenI was 19, I remembered these girls sailing across the Atlantic together at the same age. I was glad to hear that the narrator seemed to enjoy it like I do!

Can’t stop listening

I have listened to this sweet and funny classic at least three times and have read it as a hard copy at least two more. If you love travel, or Europe, or delightful romps through the 1920s then you will enjoy this book. It’s a memoir that reads as well as any novel and is still as laugh out loud funny as it was long, long ago.

loved it!

such a fun memoir of a lost era. The bedbug scenes had me roaring with laughter.

Classic, great book

I adore this book, and have since I first read it in 9th grade. It's at times side-splittingly funny, describing two bright Bryn Mawr College students traveling in England and France just after World War I. The one great disappointment is the reader, who misses dry humor and uses a nearly sentimental voice in sarcastic/sardonic passages. But, the book is great enough to look past that...

Delighted to find this fave on Audible!

I discovered this book as a teen in my high school library and it has been the one book I've read and reread the most over the years. When I discovered a local bookseller of rare and used books Our Hearts Were Young and Gay was first on my list to look for. (They had it and it was a first edition!) It doesn't matter that I've read it countless times (a wild guess would be 30+), I still dissolve into giggles at the authors' misadventures every single time. I was delighted to find it on Audible and can now dive back into Cornelia's and Emily's teenage misadventures in Europe while on the go. Celeste Lawson's performance is delightful!
AUDIBLE 20 REVIEW SWEEPSTAKES ENTRY