Auntie Mame

Title: Auntie Mame
Genre: Novel
Author: Patrick Dennis (1921-1976)
Illustrator: Unknown
Publisher: Popular Library
Year: 1956 (second paperback printing of 1955 book)
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback, mass market
Provenance: Contains a Salt River Project electric bill pay stub (total amount due: $10.11) sent to Theodore Novak of Scottsdale, Arizona.
Opening Sentence: "It has rained all day. Not that I don't mind rain, but this is the day I promised to put up the screens and take my kid to the beach."
Random Passage: "She was a cheap, gold-digging little whore who called herself a waitress because she was too dishonest to call herself a whore; and I was cheap, snobbish little parasite who called myself a student because I was too dishonest to call myself a parasite and too honest to call a whore a mistress."
Notes: Classic novel of a freewheeling single lady raising her nephew admidst her eccentric 1920s social circle. With sexed-up cover artwork, the Popular Library paperback edition arrived on the racks in October 1956. That same month, the stage version of Auntie Mame premiered on Broadway with Rosalind Russell playing the title character.