Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her World, Her Art [Hardcover]

Robert Becker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 13, 1996

16 pages of illustrations, 152 b/w photographs in text

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lancaster, who died in 1994 at the age of 93, was a decorator and designer who specialized in stately homes and their gardens. Her elegant biography?which has all the earmarks of an officially sanctioned work?is, like its subject, something of an elaborately maintained anachronism, in which meticulously described rooms are far more important than the people who inhabit them. Lancaster was born in Virginia. One of her aunts became Lady Astor, another the wife of artist Charles Dana Gibson (and a prototype of the Gibson Girl). After a brief marriage to a Marshall Field heir, she married Ronald Tree, a future Conservative member of Parliament, settled in England and turned her hand to interior decoration. After two sons and Nancy's nervous breakdown, the Tree marriage ended in divorce and she married a Colonel Lancaster, who is described as "a cad." Becker, a contributor to Interview and House Beautiful, built his uncritical bio around his subject's own chatty mini-autobiography, which runs in boldface through the book in much the same way that the words of Jesus appear in red type in some editions of the New Testament. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Considered one of the grande dames of interior design, Lancaster created, through her firm Colefax and Fowler, the "English country look" of faded elegance accented with flowers and chintz. Born a Langhorne of Virginia (her aunts included Nancy Astor, the first female Member of Parliament, and Irene Gibson, whose illustrator husband immortalized her as the Gibson Girl), Nancy married Ronald Tree and lived her adult life in English society, where she earned her reputation from the decoration of her own homes. Journalist Becker allows Lancaster to tell her own story, focusing on her homes and gardens while giving an entertaining description of wealthy Anglo-American life during the 20th century. Appropriate for larger biography and design collections.?Gayle A. Williamson, formerly with Fashion Inst. of Design & Merchandising, Los Angeles
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 426 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (February 13, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394567919
• ISBN-13: 978-0394567914
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,054,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put it down!, August 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her World, Her Art (Hardcover)

Robert Becker's richly detailed look at the British and American "upper crust," and his entertaining account of their private world and its decline, reminded me of an episode of "Masterpiece Theater" or the book "Brideshead Revisited." While I thought the renderings of Nancy Lancaster's decorating and garden designs fascinating, I was most absorbed in the life that went on behind closed doors in the houses, and the people -- Winston Churchill, the Prince of Wales, Lady Astor, David Niven -- who crossed the houses' thresholds. Wonderful photographs also. I was not prepared to like a biography about a decorator and her work, but because of the way Becker wove together the social and political history of the time, and descriptions of the houses she owned and decorated, with the events of this extraordinary woman's life, I couldn't put it down.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Rate Biography of Nancy Lancaster, September 2, 2000

By 

nbbragg (Winston-Salem, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her World, Her Art (Hardcover)

Robert Becker has written a fascinating book on the life of Nancy Lancaster which I have just read in the summer of 2000. It is even more timely with the new biography of Sister Parrish just out this summer. Becker is an extremely good story teller, with a fine ability to capture the life and times of his subject. My family is from the same area of Virginia, and he has the piedmont Virginia people described in the most believeable way, including expressions of the eras covered. The technique of incorporating Nancy Lancaster's own account in the body of the book is most effective. I was worried in reading the introduction that it might be intrusive, but not so. The book made me think of Eleanor Brown of Mcmillan and Company in New York, and Sarah Hunter Kelly - all decorators of the same generation. Hats off to Robert Becker!!! Nicholas Bragg

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read if you are interested in this time of life., June 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her World, Her Art (Hardcover)

Having worked for Nancy Lancaster in her last house,the 'Coach House' in Oxfordshire, I found this a fascinating read. Her life was very full and she met and knew so many interesting people of whom she was interested in talking about. Her style was to be envied and even copied. I would love a copy of this to read again.