Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford

Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford
by Jessica Mitford

Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford
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Book Summary Information

Author: Jessica Mitford
Editor: Peter Y. Sussman
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-17
ISBN: 0375410325
Number of pages: 768
Publisher: Knopf

Book Reviews of Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford

Book Review: an intimidating sight
Summary: 5 Stars

Mitford-despisers complain that we fans too easily forgive them their sins on account of their rare wit and charm. Well, in the case of Decca at least, this charge is unfair. She was funny (and cruel): her account of a 1962 house party at Chatsworth is quite delicious; ditto her accounts of what passes for high society on Mull. But she was also brave, in journalism and in life. A deathbed letter to Bob - 'It's so odd to be dying, so I must just jot a few thoughts' - is a model of clarity (though perhaps you would expect this in one who had so much time and energy railing against an industry that so pointlessly prettified corpses); so, too, is a letter to Benjamin in which she urges him to seek help for his illness. The fact remains that as an example of what a woman can do once she has rid herself of, or at least decided to ignore, the expectations of others - family, men, society - Jessica Mitford will always take some beating. That she is also a hoot is merely the icing on the cake.

Summary of Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford

In a profile of J.K. Rowling, The Daily Telegraph (UK), said, "Her favorite drink is gin and tonic, her least favorite food, trip. Her heroine is Jessica Mitford."

"Decca" Mitford lived a larger-than-life life: born into the British aristocracy-one of the famous (and sometimes infamous) Mitford sisters-she ran away to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with her cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill's nephew, then came to America, became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, and embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist (her funeral-industry expos?, The American Way of Death, became an instant classic). She was a celebrated wit, a charmer, and throughout her life a prolific and passionate writer of letters-now gathered here.

Decca's correspondence crackles with irreverent humor and mischief, and with acute insight into human behavior (and misbehavior) that attests to her generous experience of the worlds of politics, the arts, journalism, publishing, and high and low society. Here is correspondence with everyone from Katharine Graham and George Jackson, Betty Friedan, Miss Manners, Julie Andrews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Decca's sisters the Duchess of Devonshire and the novelist Nancy Mitford, her parents, her husbands, her children, and her grandchildren.

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