Alice-Leone MoatsNo Nice Girl Swears
Notes on High Society, Social Graces, and Keeping Your Wits from a Jazz-Age Debutante
Born in Mexico in 1908 as the only child of wealthy and prominent American parents, Alice-Leone Moats was educated at Manhattan’s Brearley School and the Fermata School for Girls in Aiken, South Carolina, and was admitted to Oxford University, where she spent three days. As a young woman, Moats, fluent in five languages, danced in debutante balls and mingled with high society. Moats was commissioned to author No Nice Girl Swears in 1933, which met great acclaim and marked the beginning of her illustrious writing career. She later published prolifically as a foreign correspondent for Collier’s magazine in Japan, China, and the former Soviet Union, and was a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Over her lifetime, Moats authored nine books. She died in Philadelphia in 1989 at the age of eighty-one.
I: No Nice Girl Swears
II: Should She Ask Him In?
III: You're the First Man I've Ever Kissed
IV: Keeping an Amateur Standing
V: This Casual Era
VI: May I Call You Up Sometime?
VII: Out for No Good
VIII: Joining In
XX: Launching a Belle
X: Chaperons Do Exist
XI. Between Courses
XII. The Inevitable Details
XIII. Lunches and Teas; Or, Scarcely Worth the Trouble
XIV. Coming Out to Music
XV. Cutting In or Sitting Out
XVI. That Certain Someone
XVII. The Great Step
XVIII. In a Cloud of Tulle
XIX. Twice Shy—?
XX. Travel Broadens the Mind
XXI. Never Speak to Strangers Unless They Speak to You
XXII. Out of Town
XXIII. Summer, Winter, Spring
XXIV. An Old English Custom
XXV. In a Strange Bed
XXVI. Pity the Poor Working Girl
XXVII. Serious Business
XXVIII. Hot Footlights
XXIX. The Hiccuping Fifties
XXX. Our Plastered Friends
