by Bravig Imbs
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The author attended the Ivy League Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, during the years 1922-1924. During that time he got free lodging in the house of Professor David Lambuth, Head of the English Department, in return for acting as a butler and making himself useful about the house. This brought him into close daily contact with Myrtle Lambuth, the Professor’s wife, with the hilarious results recounted in this memoir written as a novel. The Lambuths are called ‘the Ramsons’ in the book, and although the famous people appearing in the story are all given their real names, all the Dartmouth personalities are given false names. Until now it has remained a mystery at Dartmouth as to who the ‘Ramsons’ and the others really were. At last the book can be published with their identities made clear for the first time, even though their fictional names are retained within the story itself. We can now see many of them in contemporary photographs, which bring the characters of the story to life. Imbs had a gift for high comedy and affectionate satire, and this intimate tale is perhaps unlike that of any other university student which has been put into the form of a compulsively readable book either before or since. President Hopkins of Dartmouth, who had met Imbs several times, got into a towering rage and had the book banned in the town, and apparently in the entire state as well. But perhaps tempers have cooled by now. – Or have they?
BRAVIG IMBS (1904-1946), born in Milwaukee of Norwegian immigrant parents, died in a military jeep accident at the age of only 42 in Europe. His wife died three years later, and his literary legacy remained unmanaged for decades, so that at least two more novels were lost in manuscript and this book (originally entitled The Professor’s Wife) became forgotten. Imbs is still known to literary scholars for his racy account of his close friendships with Gertrude Stein, Elliott Paul, and others in Paris during the 1920s, Confessions of Another Young Man (1936). Imbs was a poet, originally published while still at Dartmouth, a critic (he wrote about surrealism for The Saturday Review), and an accomplished musician. He became a broadcaster for the U. S. State Department’s Operational Intelligence Center during and immediately following the Second World War, making him a widely popular radio personality in France during those years. Because he died suddenly before he could return to America and resume his literary career, Imbs has for too long been one of American literature’s forgotten men (or boys). He and his wife were survived by three orphaned young children, the eldest of whom went on to become one of America’s most famous fashion designers.
£9.99
ISBN 978-1-913378-07-3