3 NOVEMBER 1973, Page 5

Invented teenagers

Sir: "Teenagers," writes Isabel Quigley (October 20), "are quite a recent invention," but she is uncertain when precisely this vulgar word was popularised. We know that the astringent Henry Fairlie — in a lapse which

he must ever rue — fathered the equally sloppy concept of an " Establishment " in an article on Burgess and Maclean in The Spectator (September 1955). Cannot one of your correspondents satisfy the curiosity of Miss Quigley? That sentient woman, Louise de Vilmorin, who knew "the first time I saw a pair of jeans in Paris, that was the beginning of the end," felt confident as to the origin of the word. "Those awful Americans, they invented the teenager," she accused: but was

she correct? R. T. Hines Selwyn College, Carfibridge