Love from Nancy : The Letters of Nancy Mitford - Softcover

Charlotte Mosley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340599219 ISBN 13: 9780340599211

Publisher: Sceptre, 1994

Synopsis

Contains Nancy Mitford's humorous letters to her family and friends. Mitford never wrote an autobiography, but this collection of letters provides a portrayal of her life and the times in which she lived.

About this title

About the Author

Charlotte Mosley lives in Paris and has worked as a publisher and journalist. She is the editor of Love from Nancy, The Letters of Nancy Mitford, The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh and The Mitfords, Letters Between Six Sisters.

From Kirkus Reviews

The first collection of Nancy Mitford's letters--which, like those of her British literary contemporaries (Evelyn Waugh, Harold Acton, Cyril Connolly, et. al), reflect a wit and style that never quite mask an underlying anguish at a world changed too much. Born in 1904 and dying in Paris in 1973, Mitford was a diligent correspondent who left behind more than a thousand letters. This collection (edited by her niece), spanning more than 60 years and a hundred correspondents, includes not only letters that provide an epistolary history of Mitford's life but also those that illuminate her relationship with her famous peers and equally famous--or, as often, notorious--sisters: Jessica, author of The American Way of Death; Unity, admirer of Hitler; and Diana, wife of British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. Like her friend Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, Mitford's letters are written to or about that brilliant between-the-wars-generation that connected and reconnected in the company of interesting people in stylish milieus like the British embassy in Paris; Chatsworth, the ducal home of Mitford's youngest sister; and the Guinness's Irish castle. Many names here will be unfamiliar--and the need to consult footnotes is an irritant--but what makes the reading worthwhile are letters like the one in which Mitford relates Evelyn Waugh's answer when asked how he reconciled being so horrible with being a Christian. ``He replied rather sadly that were he not a Christian he would be even more horrible.'' Mitford writes with great wit and plucky panache- -making the best of an often unhappy personal life--about her writing, her friends, and contemporary events: the bombing raids in wartime London, Dior's ``New Look,'' the 1968 riots in Paris, etc. A welcome addition to literary history that poignantly recalls the glittering youth and not-so-bright decline and fall of all those ``bright young things'' whom Mitford and Waugh wrote about so well elsewhere. (Photographs) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sceptre
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0340599219
• ISBN 13: 9780340599211
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 624