This is an exuberant group portrait of four extraordinary writers-Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber-whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors captured the spirit of the 1920s.

Marion Meade re-creates the aura of excitement, romance, and promise of the 1920s, when these literary heroines did what they wanted, said what they thought, and kicked open the door for twentieth-century women, setting a new model for every woman trying to juggle the serious issues of economic independence, political power, and sexual freedom. But Meade also brings to light the anxiety and despair that lurked beneath the nonstop partying and outrageous behavior. She describes the men who influenced them, loved them, and sometimes betrayed them. And while she describes their social and literary triumphs, she also writes movingly of the penances they paid. A vibrant mixture of literary scholarship, social history, and scandal, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is a rich evocation of an era that will forever intrigue and captivate us.