LOVE FROM NANCY CL (Hardcover)

by Charlotte Mosley (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Mitford's correspondences are as urbane and witty as her books--which is saying quite a lot, since The Pursuit of Love was not only a bestseller but generally considered one of the most enjoyable novels published in Britain during the 1940s, and her series of French biographies in the 1950s and '60s ( Madame de Pompadour , etc.) proved that scholarship could also be vastly entertaining. Born in 1904, she was the eldest of the six aristocratic and controversial Mitford sisters: Diana married British fascist Oswald Mosley, Jessica espoused communism and Unity, a friend of Hitler, attempted suicide when England declared war on Germany (Pamela and Deborah led more conventional lives). Through all the political storms that shook her family, Nancy remained elegant, amusing and completely free of self-pity, even as she lay dying from an agonizing form of cancer in 1973. Her letters to such famous friends as Evelyn Waugh chronicle a life filled with enthusiastic socializing, shopping and eating, yet also disciplined and productive. (She wrote more than a dozen books, as well as many articles and translations of literature from France, her beloved adopted home from the late 1940s until her death.) Mosley, who is married to Mitford's nephew, has done a splendid editing job, preserving Nancy's idiosyncratic punctuation and selecting individual letters so that there is very little repetition of material. A delicious treat for Mitford fans, this captivating volume also makes a marvelous introduction to her engaging writing style. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The eldest of the beautiful and brainy Mitford sisters, Nancy Mitford, who died in 1973, has long been eclipsed by the political activities of her sisters Diana and Unity and the social criticism of Jessica. But the mordant wit that enlivened Mitford's novels and reporting sparkles in this first collection of her vivid letters, painstakingly edited by her niece-in-law Mosley from over 8000 surviving pieces. Mitford knew everyone in the British and French upper crust, as well as most of the major and minor artistic figures of the postwar era, and she wrote to all of them--and about them. Mosley's notes pare away slang, nicknames, and in-jokes to reveal Mitford's only surviving autobiography, the witty, gossipy, and uniquely English view of her world and its inhabitants--Evelyn Waugh, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Mitford's own family. For collections with a British interest. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/93.
- Shelley Cox, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 538 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (December 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395570417
• ISBN-13: 978-0395570418
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,488,477 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Real Thing, May 19, 2002

By	L. Dann "adhdmom" (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford (Hardcover)

Letters like these are treasures of intimate understanding that transcend the paparrazzi snapshots and questionable commentary of the contemporary celebrity gossip industry. They are not 100% but certainly more accurate represntations of the information that is not a part of the public identity.
Indeed, Nancy Mitford, her family and her celebrated friend, Evelyn Waugh, were represented often in the gossip columns of their lifetimes. To the degree that Lady Redesdale, NM's mother, commented that as soon as she read a headline that said "Peer's daughter..." she knew it would be one of her own. The letters compiled here, relect the 'way' it was at the parties, what NM's often wicked but always colorful take was on the 'important' guests. Some of these were, Princess Margaret in a ghastly mini dress and bouffant hairdo, or Churchill's very less impressive, often drunk, son Randolph, and innumerable royals, politicians and artists, all discussed without awe, or particular excitement, just ordinary people, being foolish or, as she would have it, boors.
Nancy Mitford's life spanned a period in history that seems impossibly long, and long ago. People, I have learned, become implanted in a time, for better or worse, and for Nancy this was the age known largely by art as "between the wars." It is those times, in the decadence and continued supremacy of the class system in England, that Nancy could embody the comedy of aristocratic insularity being pummelled by the modern world. Nancy was far more a representative of the old, but capable of making ideological decisions that her sisters and parents despaired of. They, for anyone not already drowned in the subject, went largely pro-German, with one, Unity, an intimate with Hitler before England entered the war. Another, Jessica, was a communist, and transplant to America, for which she was more condemned.
The bulk of the correspondence is certainly lively, and in no way self-centered, or particularly dense. This holds true even when death or some other tragedy overtakes her. The oddest to me was her comment that Unity had been taken to a concentration camp and that they would leave her there for a while to learn a few things before getting her out. Either that is British aristocratic detachment that I fail to get, or else she did not know much about concentration camps.
The only obstacle to incredible fun reading is the footnote requirements. They certainly are necessary for comprehension of who people are and what they're referencing, but they do make it a bit choppy and annoying. Still, it was an extraordinary time, as Nancy would say, between the fascists and the Bolshies, as well as the hilarious anti-foreigner burlesque that her father's actions brought to life in her novels. They may have appeared extreme however, the letters suggest their accuracy as well as their shared viewpoint, if not enactments, throughout the upper classes of that period.
Nancy moved to France after the war and horrible blitz, never to return to England. In her charge to get away from the weight of her very visible life there, she made but minor progress. Almost each letter has at its essence, the perspective as well as many references to her eccentric family, and its myriad political and social highways that led seemingly everywhere. If we did not have this unique vantage point, these names would be connected only to history's image, or critical reviews. Nancy makes history, quite filled with very human players, from DeGaulle to Princess Elizabeth, to Anthony Eden, to rock and roll
She wore Dior, summered in Venice, and lived for 30 some years in Paris, but she remained eminently British aristocrat, as did those for whom she was enormously, and eternally loyal.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book, October 5, 2002

By	A reader (Litchfield Co., CT) - See all my reviews

One summer I read all the Thomas Hardy books in my library. Another I spent reading all I could find on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. This was my Mitford summer.

It began with Mary Lovell's, "The Sisters" and I've read most of the Mitford biographies and novels that I could find.

I am enjoying this book for the letters and pictures. The footnotes don't bother me because I know who most of the people are from my reading of English history. French phrases don't bother me because I know enough French to be able to understand them altho it is nice to have translations given.

I believe young readers may have a problem with this book because they do not understand how it once was. I was a small child during WWII and didn't suffer as much as people in England did. The Mitfords were a wonderfully strange family and readers probably should read Mary Lovell's book first as background.

I love Nancy's sharp observations and style. It saddens me that she didn't like Americans. I wonder why. I believe she was one of the most interesting of the Mitford sisters, but they were each special in their own way. I am just so sorry she had such a painful illness at the end. It was very sad to read of her last days.