They wouldn’t have much to say to each other at a dinner party, but there are few more delightful young women in modern literature than Miss Lorelei Lee and Miss Flora Poste, the indomitable, and conniving, heroines of two of the best comic novels of all time, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) and Cold Comfort Farm (1932).

Jane Russell, Charles Coburn, Marilyn Monroe in ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ (1953)

Some people, I suspect, may only know these two masterpieces by the films made from them. I recently checked out a VHS tape from the local library of Cold Comfort Farm, directed by John Schlesinger from a screenplay by Malcolm Bradbury and starring a radiant Kate Beckinsale. Before I’d even handed over my library card, a middle-aged stranger approached and said that this was one of her favorite movies and she watched it over and over. I asked if she’d ever read the book. No. Yet for all the pleasures of the film, the novel is ten times as good. This is true, too, of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which was turned into a musical comedy directed by Howard Hawks with delicious performances by Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, and Charles Coburn. In it the divine Miss M even sings her classic showstopper, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

Still, if you’ve never read the novels, you’re really missing out on much of the comedy, for both Anita Loos (1888-1981) and Stella Gibbons (1902-1989) are irresistible prose stylists. Lorelei Lee’s wide-eyed ditziness is nothing less than a joy forever. Take just the opening sentences from this “illuminating diary of a professional lady”: