Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (40 page)

Bret, David,
The Mistinguett Legend
(St Martin’s Press, New York, 1990)

——
Tallulah Bankhead: A Scandalous Life
(Robson Books, New York, 1997)

Browne, J. Crawford,
The Early Days of the Department Store
(Scribner’s, New York, 1921)

Buel, James William,
The Magic City
(Arno Press, New York, reprinted 1974)

Burg, David F.,
Chicago’s White City of 1893
(University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 1976)

Burke, John,
Duet in Diamonds: The Flamboyant Saga of Lillian Russell and Diamond Jim Brady in America’s Gilded Age
(Putnam, New York, 1972)

Calder, Robert,
Willie: The Life of Maugham
(Heinemann, 1989)

Callery, Sean,
Harrods: The Story of Society’s Favourite Store
(Ebury Press, 1991)

Cantor, Eddie, and Freedman, David,
Ziegfeld: The Great Glorifier
(Alfred H. King, New York, 1934)

Carter, Ernestine,
20th Century Fashion: A Scrapbook, 1910 to Today
(Eyre Methuen, 1975)

Cartland, Barbara,
We Danced All Night
(Hutchinson, 1970)

Castle, Irene,
Castles in the Air
(Da Capo Press, 1958)

Chalmers, W. S.,
The Life of Beatty
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1951)

Chapman, Gary,
The Delectable Dollies
(Sutton, 2006)

Chase, Edna Woolman,
Always in Vogue
(Victor Gollancz, 1954)

Collas, Phillippe and Villedary, Eric,
Edith Wharton’s French Riviera
(Flammarion, Paris, 2002)

Cooper, Lady Diana,
The Rainbow Comes and Goes
(Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1958)

Corina, Maurice,
Fine Silks and Oak Counters: Debenhams
(Hutchinson, 1978)

Cowles, Virginia,
The Astors
(Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1979)

Cruikshank, R.J.,
Roaring Century
(Hamish Hamilton, 1946)

Curtis, Anthony,
Somerset Maugham
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977)

Dale, Tim,
Harrods: The Store and the Legend
(Pan, 1981)

Davis, Dorothy,
A History of Shopping
(RKP, London & Toronto, 1966)

Dedmon, Emmett,
Fabulous Chicago
(Random House, New York, 1953)

Ditchett, S. H.,
Marshall Field & Company: The Life Story of a Great Concern
(Scribner’s, New York, 1922)

Duis, Perry R.,
‘Challenging Chicago’: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837–1920
(University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 1998)

Elias, Stephen,
Alexander T. Stewart: The Forgotten Merchant Prince
(Praeger, Westport, Conn., 1992)

Etherington Smith, Meredith, and Pilcher, Jeremy,
The ‘It’ Girls
(Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, San Diego, 1986)

Ewing, Elizabeth,
The History of 20th Century Fashion
(Batsford, 1974)

——
Dress and Undress: A History of Women’s Underwear
(Batsford, 1978)

Ferry, John,
A History of the Department Store
(Macmillan, 1960)

Fisher, Richard,
Syrie Maugham
(Duckworth, 1978)

Fraser, Grace Lovat,
In the Days of My Youth
(Cassell, 1970)

Gallati, Mario,
Mario of the Caprice
(Hutchinson, 1960)

Gardiner, James,
Gaby Deslys
(Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986)

Garland, Madge,
A History of Fashion
(Orbis, 1970)

Goldring, D.,
The Nineteen Twenties
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1945)

Graham, J. A. Maxtone,
Eccentric Gamblers
(Mowbrays, 1975)

Graves, Charles,
None but the Rich: The Story of the Greek Syndicate
(Cassell, 1963)

Gray, Stuart,
Edwardian Shops and Stores in London: A Biographical Dictionary
(Duckworth, 1985)

Green, Martin,
Children of the Sun
: A
Narrative of Decadence in England after 1908
(Basic Books, New York, 1976)

Gregory, Alexis,
The Golden Age of Travel
(Cassell, 1991)

Halliday, Stephen,
Underground to Everywhere
(Sutton, 2001)

Hartnell, Norman,
Silver and Gold
(Evans Bros., 1955)

Hendrickson, Robert,
The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America’s Great Department Stores
(Stein & Day, New York, 1933)

Herndon, Booten,
Bergdorf’s on the Plaza
(Knopf, New York, 1956)

Hess, Max, Jr,
Every Dollar Counts: The Story of the American Department Store
(Fairchild, New York, 1952)

Honeycombe, Gordon,
Selfridges: Seventy-Five Years: The Story of the Store
(Park Lane Press, 1984)

Horne, Alistair,
The Terrible Year: the Paris Commune, 1871
(Macmillan, 1971)

Jackson, Kate,
George Newnes and the New Journalism in Britain, 1880–1910: Culture and Profit
(Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001)

Jefferys, James,
Retail Trading in Britain, 1850–1950
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1954)

Jenkins, Alan,
The Rich Rich: The Story of the Big Spenders
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977)

——
The Twenties
(Heinemann, 1974)

Jenkins, Simon,
Newspapers: The Power and the Money
(Faber, 1979)

Kahr, Joan,
Edgar Brandt: Master of Art Deco Ironwork
(Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1999), foreword by François Brandt

Kidd, Janet Aitken,
The Beaverbrook Girl
(Collins, 1987)

Kinross, Lord,
The Windsor Years
(Viking, 1967)

Koehn, Nancy F.,
Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers’ Trust from Wedgwood to Dell
(Harvard Business School Press, Harvard, 2001)

Kurth, Peter,
Isadora: A Sensational Life
(Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 2001)

Leslie, Anita,
Edwardians in Love
(Hutchinson, 1972)

Lieven, Prince Peter,
The Birth of the Ballets Russes
(Allen & Unwin, 1935)

MacColl, Gail, and Wallace, Carol,
To Marry an English Lord
(Workman, New York, 1989)

Mackail, Denis,
The Story of J. M. B., Sir James Barrie
(Peter Davies, 1941)

McKnight, Gerald,
The Scandal of Syrie Maugham
(W. H. Allen, 1980)

MacQueen-Pope, Walter James,
Gaiety: Theatre of Enchantment
(W. H. Allen, 1949)

Madsen, Axel,
Coco Chanel
(Bloomsbury, 1990)

——
The Marshall Fields
(Wiley, New York, 2002)

Manley, P. S.,
Clarence Hatry
(Abacus, 1976)

Marbury, Elisabeth,
My Crystal Ball
(Hurst & Blackett, 1924)

Marcus, Stanley,
Minding the Store
(Little Brown, New York, 1974)

Margetson, Stella,
The Long Party: High Society in the 1920s
(Gordon Cremonsi, 1974)

Marly, Diana de,
Worth: Father of Haute Couture
(Elm Tree Books, 1980)

Masters, Anthony,
Rosa Lewis
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977)

Maugham, W. Somerset,
Of Human Bondage
(Heinemann, 1934)

——
Plays: One
(Methuen Drama, 1997)

Maxwell, Elsa,
R.S.V.P.
(Heinemann, 1952)

——
I Married the World
(William Heinemann, 1955)

Meyers, Jeffrey,
Somerset Maugham: A Life
(Vintage, 2005)

Meyrick, Kate,
Secrets of the ‘43’
(Parkgate Press, 1933)

Miller, Michael B.,
The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920
(Allen & Unwin, 1981)

Mistinguett,
Mistinguett by Mistinguett
(Elek Books, 1954)

Morris, Lloyd,
Incredible New York: High Life and Low Life
(Bonanza Books, New York, 1950)

Mosely, Roy,
Evergreen: Victor Saville in His Own Words
(Scholarly Book Services Inc, New York, 2002)

Newby, Eric,
Something Wholesale
(Picador, 1985)

Nichols, Beverley,
The Sweet and Twenties
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1958) Nicolson, Nigel,
Mary Curzon
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977)

——
Portrait of a Marriage
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973)

Obolensky, Serge,
One Man and His Time: The Memoirs of Serge Obolensky
(Hutchinson, 1960)

Parker, Morell,
Lillian Russell: The Era of Plush
(Random House, New York, 1940)

Peiss, Kathy,
Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture
(Henry Holt, New York, 1998)

Porter, Roy,
London: A Social History
(Hamish Hamilton, 1994)

Pound, Reginald,
Arnold Bennett
(Heinemann, 1952)

——
Selfridge
(Heinemann, 1960)

Priestley, J. B.,
The Edwardians
(Heinemann, 1970)

Raphael, Frederic,
Somerset Maugham and His World
(Thames & Hudson, 1978)

Rappaport, Erika Diane,
Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End
(University of Princeton Press, Princeton, 2000)

Roberts, Cecil,
The Bright Twenties, 1920–1929
(Hodder, 1970)

Ross, Ishbel,
Silhouette in Diamonds: The Life of Mrs Potter Palmer
(Harper & Brothers, New York, 1960)

Roux-Charles, Edmonde,
Chanel
(Collins, 1989)

Schiaparelli, Elsa,
Shocking Life
(Dent, 1954)

Scott, Jonathan,
The Pleasures of Antiquity: British Collectors of Greece and Rome
(Paul Mellon Centre, USA, 2003)

Seebohm, Caroline,
The Man who was Vogue: The Life and Times of Condé Nast
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982)

Selfridge, H. G.,
The Romance of Commerce
(John Lane, 1917)

Short, Edward H. and Rickett, Arthur C.,
Ring Up the Curtain
(Herbert Jenkins, 1938)

Sibour, Violette de,
Flying Gypsies
(G. P. Putnam, New York, 1930)

Siry, Joseph,
Carson, Pirie Scott: Louis Sullivan and the Chicago Department Store
(University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988)

Souhami, Diana,
Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter
(Flamingo, 1977)

Stansky, Peter,
Sassoon: The Worlds of Philip and Sybil
(Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003)

Tebbel, John,
The Marshall Fields
(Dutton, New York, 1947)

Thomson, George,
Lord Castlerosse
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973)

Thynne, Daphne,
The Duchess of Jermyn Street
(Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964)

Tilden, Philip,
True Remembrances: The Memoir of an Architect
(Country Life, 1954)

Twombly, Robert,
Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work
(Viking Penguin, 1986)

Twyman, Robert W.,
The History of Marshall Field & Co
. (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1954)

——
Potter Palmer: Merchandising Innovator of the West
(University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1951)

Vanderbilt, Gloria, and Furness, Thelma,
Double Exposure
(Hamilton, 1961)

Veblen, Thorstein,
The Theory of the Leisure Class
(Macmillan, 1899)

Vickers, Hugo,
Cecil Beaton
(Phoenix Press, 1985)

Vinikas, Vincent,
Soft Soap, Hard Sell: American Hygiene in an Age of Advertisement
(Iowa State University Press, Ames, 1992)

Waywell, Geoffrey B.,
The Lever and Hope Sculptures
(Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin, 1986)

Wendt, Lloyd, and Kogan, Herman,
Give the Lady What She Wants: The Story of Marshall Field
(Rand McNally, Chicago, 1952)

Westminster, Loelia,
Grace and Favour
(Reynal, New York, 1961)

White, Palmer,
Poiret
(Studio Vista, 1973)

Williams, Alfred H.,
No Name at the Door: A Memoir of Gordon Selfridge
(W. H. Allen, 1956)

Wilson, A. N.,
The Victorians
(Hutchinson, 2001)

Wilson, Edmund,
The Twenties
(Macmillan, 1975)

Wilson, Sandy,
The Roaring Twenties
(Eyre Methuen, 1976)

Winkler, John K.,
Five & Ten: The Fabulous Life of F. W. Woolworth
(Robert McBridge, New York, 1941)

Woodhead, Lindy,
War Paint: Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry
(Virago, 2003)

Woolton, Frederick James,
The Memoirs of the Rt Hon the Earl of Woolton
(Cassell, 1959)

Yoxall, Harry,
A Fashion of Life
(Taplinger, New York, 1967)

Zola, Emile,
The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames
) (1883)

H
arry Gordon Selfridge left the store in 1939, and died aged 91 in 1947, so the chance of my meeting anyone who knew him in his prime, or worked with him from the early days, was never feasible. Biographers, however, depend on luck as well as their own judgement, and I was lucky with the treasures I found in the magnificent Selfridges archives (at the time when this book was originally written, maintained by the History of Advertising Trust, but now returned to a permanent home in the store itself).

The archive collection contains not just the old press cuttings books – with virtually every clipping personally noted by HGS himself – but also lists and notebooks, his private ledger, letters, photographs, personal ephemera and store catalogues, price lists, promotional material and advertisements. Over the years, friends, family and retirees have donated all manner of additions with the result that it is one of the finest examples of British retailing history in existence today.

In the early 1900s HGS invested in a gold mine, at one point being told by the engineers that they had struck a seam. Sadly, it was worthless, but I struck my own seam of pure gold when Sue Filmer (of HAT) passed me a folder full of notes gathered by the store management in 1951 when they had the idea of publishing an official biography of Harry Gordon Selfridge. At that time, Selfridges was owned by Lewis’s of Liverpool, who agreed to finance the project. The book went through a series of three prospective authors and at least two publishers and agents before the finished work,
Selfridge
by Reginald Pound, was finally published in 1960. The project was co-ordinated by the redoubtable Miss Mepham, who had been the gatekeeper to HGS’s inner sanctum. She was the one woman still alive who had intimate knowledge of what his son later described as ‘the several sides of
my father’. She stayed at the store until 1957 and thanks to her diligence virtually all the senior retirees still alive between 1951 and 1957 were interviewed in depth to gather stories about HGS. Very few of them lived to see the finished book, but their contribution lives on.