CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER: A Book In The Jugular Vein. by Sims, Dorothy Rice (1889-1960) - 1940.

New York:: Simon & Schuster,, 1940.. Hardcover first edition -. Very good overall in blue cloth with printed cream spine label (some discoloration to front endpaper, tear to leaf 175/176). no dust jacket. . First printing. Informal autobiography of an uncommon woman, one whose very privileged life was more than just "curiouser." It opens with her leaving school at twelve, since there was "no point in clogging my mind with things that everyone knew." She studied sculpture and painting in Spain and Paris. She was a motorcycle street racer, and the first amateur licensed woman pilot in the United States, training at Wright School, Mineola, New York, in 1916. One of her sisters showed a talent for writing poetry, so their father founded the Poetry Society of America and set up a salon in the grand ballroom of their 22-room apartment at the Ansonia Hotel; a salon which was regularly attended by Theodore Dreiser, Gertrude Atherton, Richard LaGallienne and Frank Harris, and others. With her second husband, Hal Sims, she became a famous bridge player, as one of her expert husband's partners and for her frequent use of "psychic" bids, or bluffs. Illustrated with 16 full page plates by the author. Foreword by George Kaufman. The NY Times review comments that far from being as scatterbrained as Kaufman makes her out to be in his foreword, she was a pioneer in motor cycle racing, aviation, modern art and tournament bridge, a pretty impressive list by anyone's standards. xiv, 203 pp plus final illustration.