Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (novel) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (novel) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady is a comic novel written by Anita Loos, first published in 1925. It is one of several famous novels published that year to chronicle the so-called Jazz Age, including Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and Van Vechten's "Firecrackers". Loos was inspired to write the book after watching a sexy blonde turn intellectual H. L. Mencken into a lovestruck schoolboy. Mencken, a close friend, actually enjoyed the work and saw to it that it was published. Originally published as a magazine series in "Harper's Bazaar", it was published
Anita Loos Loos began to write a sketch of Mencken and his vacant lady friends that would later become "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" began as a series of short sketches published in "Harper's Bazaar", Known as the "Lorelei" stories, they were satires on the state of sexual relations that only vaguely alluded to sexual intimacy; the magazine's circulation quadrupled overnight. The heroine of the stories, Lorelei Lee, was a bold, ambitious flapper, who was much more concerned with collecting expensive baubles from her conquests than any marriage licenses, in addition to being a shrewd woman of loose morals and high