Breakfast at Tiffany's : A new Literary Thread

After ’Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Little Women’, I felt it was time for something a little bit more modern and Breakfast at Tiffany’s was my daughter’s suggestion. What is it with being 20 something and Holly Golightly?!!!! Of course it was an absolute pleasure to work on and I am thrilled with the result. I think it turned out to be a thoroughly contemporary design …..

With a movie as iconic as this, it is easy to forget that there was an author behind the original book, although I have to say that after doing a little research, I don’t think Truman Capote is easy to forget at all. He was a wonderfully colourful character that graced the literary stage with flamboyance and controversy. Born in 1924 in New Orleans, Louisiana, to dysfunctional parents, from an early age, Truman had to find his own way of living life. Farmed out to relatives and pushed from school to school, it is no wonder that he had his eccentricities. Spending holidays with family in Alabama, he befriended Harper Lee and became the model for Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. He certainly didn’t shine academically and with a topsy turvy childhood behind him, it is really rather impressive that he acheived what he did. His quirkiness helped to win influential friends and as a young adult frequenting the clubs of New York, he charmed his way in to some magic circles. He worked in the copy department of the New Yorker Magazine and tried to get his musings published, but it was a struggle. However by 1948 things were looking up - he finally got his first novel published and met his long term partner Jack Dunphy, with whom he went on to have a 35 year relationship. He wrote about what he saw and he saw quite a bit - a charmer, party boy and drinker he slipped easily into the slightly murky world of drugs and dark waters.

Truman Capote’s ‘Novella’ Breakfast in Tiffany’s was first published in 1958, to high critical acclaim but it wasn’t until ten years later that the movie was made. Capote said that he had Marilyn Monroe in mind for the starring role, but she was under contract to another studio and Audrey Hepburn took the role instead and certainly made it her own. Her iconic portrayal of ‘cafe society girl’ Holly Golightly is still instantly recognisable today and seems to have a never ending appeal to each new generation.

In 1959, he planned to write an article of the New Yorker about the murder of four members of a family in a rural Kansas farming community. He travelled there with Harper Lee and the two of them worked alongside the investigators. This story eventually became his novel ‘In Cold Blood’ which was an instant best seller and also later a movie. It seems he had the power to write for both men and women and deserves his place amongst the literary stars of the 20th century. I am not sure that I would normally pick an author like Capote to read, but it is interesting the such a glorious movie can sometimes lead you to new authors. It is often a difficult decision … the book first or the movie - in this case, I suspect it is nearly always the movie first, but the book should not be lost because of it. I have learned so much working on these literary projects and hope that the next one will take me on an equally interesting journey.

This little embroidery design is fun to stitch and I hope you enjoy it. The pattern is available in my etsy shop, just click here

Toodle ….ooo