Epitaph

Last October, the publishing world talked about an unhappy coincidence. Simultaneously with publication in Vanity Fair, monthly smartchart, of a savage burlesque on Frances Newman's novel, The Hard-boiled Virgin, Death came to Authoress Newman. Vanity Fair was embarrassed. Last week came another such occurrence, less embarrassing, no less unhappy. Several months ago a young aviatrix submitted a manuscript to Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis's The Country Gentleman. It was called "My Life For Aviation." Editor Philip Sheridan Rose accepted the story, changed its title to ''How I Learned to Fly," ordered it to be inserted in the September issue. The name of the authoress was Marvel Crosson. Last week as some 1,600,000 copies of The Country Gentleman were about to appear, Aviatrix Crosson was killed while flying from Santa Monica, Cal., to Cleveland in the Women's Air Derby (see p. 50). Obviously unable to recall the issue, Editor Rose waited to see what readers would say about the curiously ironical words with which the story ended:

"I have given my life to prove that women are the best pilots in the world."