Written in the aftermath of World War II, Love Goes to Press opened in London in 1946 and on Broadway in 1947. At the time a relief for the survivors of Blitzkrieg and ration cards, today it is a devilishly entertaining portrayal of the Battle of the Sexes.
In this romantic farce, set in a press camp on the Italian front in 1944, two women war correspondents—smart, sexy, and famous for scooping their male competitors—struggle to balance their professional lives with their love lives. The American literary tradition is replete with stories of “men without women,” but in Love Goes to Press Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles have created a world of “women without men.” Complications ensue when one of our heroines unexpectedly encounters her ex-husband, a famous writer whom she had divorced on the grounds of plagiarism.
This Bison Books edition features a preface and an updated afterword by Sandra Spanier discussing her recent archival discoveries, her experience of working with Gellhorn to publish the play for the first time, and the strong resemblance of the leading man to Gellhorn’s ex-husband, Ernest Hemingway.
Martha Gellhorn (1908–98) had a six-decade career as a war correspondent and published sixteen books, including six novels, short fiction, and two collections of journalistic articles.
Virginia Cowles (1912–83) also began her career as a war correspondent and wrote fifteen books of nonfiction, including the 1941 bestseller Looking for Trouble.
Sandra Spanier is a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, and author and editor of several books, including Kay Boyle: Artist and Activist.
