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By Fran Cannon Slayton
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The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters
by Charlotte Mosley
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Synopses & Reviews The great wits and beauties of their age, the Mitford sisters were immoderate in their passions for ideas and people, counting among their diverse friends Adolf Hitler and Queen Elizabeth II, Cecil Beaton and President Kennedy, Evelyn Waugh and Givenchy. As editor Charlotte Mosley notes, not since the Brontës have the members of a single family written so much about themselves, or have been so written about. The Mitfords offers an unparalleled look at these privileged sisters: Nancy, the scalding wit who transformed her family life into bestselling novels; Pamela, who craved nothing more than a quiet country life; Diana, the fascist jailed with her husband, Oswald Mosley, during World War II; Unity, a suicide, torn by her worship of Hitler and her loyalty to home; Jessica, the runaway Communist and fighter for social change; and Deborah, the genial socialite who found herself Duchess of Devonshire. Spanning the twentieth century, the magically vivid letters of the legendary Mitford sisters constitute not just a superb social and historical chronicle; they also provide an intimate portrait of the stormy but enduring relationships between six beautiful, gifted, and radically different women who wrote to one another to confide, commiserate, tease, rage, and gossip—and above all to amuse. Review: "'The six notorious and passionately opinionated daughters of the second Baron Redesdale knew many key figures of the 20th century, from Hitler and Churchill to Evelyn Waugh and Lucian Freud. The sisters wrote some 12,000 letters to each other over a span of 80 years — the last was a fax sent in 2003 by 83-year-old Deborah to the dying 93-year-old Diana — and 5% are included here. The turbulent years before and during WWII produced the most noteworthy correspondence: Jessica scandalized her family by running away with her Communist cousin, and Diana divorced a Guinness heir to marry British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. Anti-Semitic Unity gushes like a schoolgirl over Hitler and tells Jessica that she wouldn't hesitate to kill Jessica's Communist husband for Nazism — but in the meanwhile she hopes they can be friends. Nancy writes cheerily to the imprisoned Diana after secretly testifying against her during the war. In later years, Jessica irritated her sisters from her home in America and broke completely with Diana over political differences. Peppered with colorful nicknames, filled with love, encouragement, jealousy and gossip, and written primarily to amuse the recipients, the letters testify to the bonds of sisterhood. Diana's daughter-in-law has diligently edited the mammoth correspondence, although readers will need to fill in the gaps with Mitford biographies and memoirs. B&w illus.' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "Even as talented families go, the Mitford sisters are remarkable — the most brilliant pride of literary lionesses to have emerged in England since the Brontes, who also had little or no formal education. Four of the sisters were published writers of wit and substance, and, as this collection of their letters to one another demonstrates, all six could write evocatively, even hauntingly. ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) These letters have been chosen with great care by Charlotte Mosley, daughter-in-law of Diana Mitford and editor of three anthologies of Nancy Mitford's writing. Happily, her choices provide an intriguing record of each sister's personality: their conflicting politics (which ranged from Unity's crush on Adolf Hitler and Diana's fascism to Nancy's contempt for political extremes and Jessica's communism), their relationships to their parents (Sydney Bowles and David Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, who seems to have been something of a madman), their affairs, divorces, affections (Pamela's love of cooking, Deborah's delight in her children), and personal cataclysms. The correspondence shows how, over time and under stress, charming youthful differences, including differences of literary expression, evolved into polarizing distinctions that both stretched and demonstrated the bonds of familial affection. Jessica Mitford, especially, emerges as a tough-talking figure of moral conscience so unyielding that, from her 20s on, she practically seems to crash into the family mix from outer space. In contrast, Unity, whose impressionable nature led her to fall in love with Hitler, remained beloved by all of her sisters — including Jessica, who broke decisively with Diana and her husband, Oswald Mosley, over their commitment to fascism. Diana eventually learned that, in the early 1940s, Nancy had told the government that the Mosleys were dangerous and should be imprisoned — which they were, for several years. (Among their defenders was George Bernard Shaw, who pointed out that despite their notorious politics, they had not actually done anything illegal.) Nevertheless, Nancy continued until her death, in 1973, to write effusively intimate letters to Diana. This ability to compartmentalize her actions in intimate relationships was apparently unique to Nancy. It was certainly not shared by Unity, who seems to have lacked the family gene for acidulous critique and ruthless teasing — which is why in the late 1930s, as a thrilled member of Hitler's social circle, she could write vividly of how he conducted himself at tea. And it helps explain why, on the day in 1939 that Britain and Germany went to war, she went to the English Garden in Munich and tried to blow her brains out. Unity survived, but as an invalid, and eight years later an infection in the old bullet wound turned fatal. Mosley introduces each decade with direct and dignified mini-histories, sprinkles family photographs and newspaper cuttings throughout, and adds indispensable short biographies of each sister along with a wealth of explanatory footnotes. These provide as much supplementary material as a contemporary reader might need to appreciate the social and political milieus in which the sisters moved; the troubled, tragic and, in the case of Nancy, treacherous undercurrents of their playful teasing, cavalier dismissals and protestations of affection; and some of the personal shorthand and nicknames that bonded them. The over 800 pages here represent only about 5 percent of the 12,000 surviving letters and notes — all but Jessica's were handwritten — exchanged by the sisters between 1925 and 2003. Most of the Mitfords lived dramatic lives, and their social orbits brought them in close contact with world leaders (Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy), leading writers and artists (Evelyn Waugh, Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton), politicians and journalists. 'The Mitfords' could have been an operatic group biography on an epic scale: Instead, thanks to its editor's taste and discretion, it is chamber music with symphonic longings. Ironically, as the sororal voices drop away owing to irreparable feuds or lost letters or death, the surviving sisters become more serious and open. Tragedy and aging lead them to wisdom, or something very like it. Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah — to name the sisters from the eldest (b. 1904) to the youngest (b.1920) — also had a lively brother, Thomas, a barrister, born in 1909 and killed in Burma near the end of World War II. He wasn't inclined to write to his sisters, however; and although many of their letters to him have survived, few by him to any of them have, and so he has been excluded from this volume as both writer and recipient. He is quite present in spirit, though: As the editor explains, it was Tom who invented the particular tone of voice — wickedly observant, studiously offhanded, punctuated by lightning bolts of judgment — that permeates most of the sisters' letters during the first half of their lives and that occasionally reappears, like the smile of a Cheshire cat, in the second half. At this writing, Deborah is the only sister still with us. The family's wit and narrative gifts are represented in this little anecdote from a 1997 letter she wrote to Diana, describing an incident at Chatsworth, the great home of her late husband's family in Devonshire, where she lives, whose restoration she has curated, and which she has chronicled in several books: 'We've put a notice by the fountains (because when there was nearly no water they could only be on for a couple of hours) & now it says The Fountains Will Play 11.30 — 5.30. A woman standing by it, when going like Billy O, looked at her watch, which said midday, "Oh, we've missed 11.30 & we can't stay till 5.30. What a pity. Now we won't know what they play." 'The ash trees are still like winter. What does it mean. 'Much love, Debo.' Mindy Aloff is a cultural critic who has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly. She teaches at Barnard College." Reviewed by Mindy Aloff, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Synopsis: This collection offers an unparalleled and intimate glimpse into the lives of the British aristocracy and an unvarnished look at these privileged sisters. Their letters present not just a superb social and historical chronicle of the 20th century, but also illuminate their stormy but enduring relationships. Photos throughout. About the Author Charlotte Mosley, Diana Mitford's daughter-in-law, has worked as a publisher and journalist. She has published A Talent to Annoy: Essays, Articles, and Reviews by Nancy Mitford; Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford; and The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh. She lives in Paris.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780061373640
- Subtitle:
- Letters Between Six Sisters
- Author:
- Mosley, Charlotte
- Author:
- by Charlotte Mosley
- Publisher:
- Harper
- Subject:
- Women
- Subject:
- Historical - General
- Subject:
- Letters
- Subject:
- Sisters
- Subject:
- Nobility
- Subject:
- Nobility -- Great Britain.
- Subject:
- Mitford family
- Publication Date:
- November 2007
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 834
- Dimensions:
- 9.28x6.32x1.95 in. 2.61 lbs.
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