Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters Book

In Britain of the mid-Twentieth Century, there was a family of sisters named Mitford. Beautiful, brainy, and home-schooled, they emerged with strong characters and set out on very different life courses. Jessica, the leftist, eventually published her muckraking AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH about the American funeral industry. Nancy wrote numerous books, the best-remembered ones now being THE PURSUIT OF LOVE and LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE, essentially comic send-ups of her own upbringing and early adulthood. Diana was an outright Fascist of the 1930s; she and her husband were persecuted for it. Unity was of the right, too, but more a Hitler worshiper than an intellectual Fascist; she tried to blow her head off in a fit of erotomania but only partially succeeded. Pamela and "Debo" (Deborah) only wanted quiet, normal lives in an era not given to quiet or normalcy.

Thank heaven for the age of letter-writing. Will there ever be an epistolary blockbuster of nearly 900 pages written fifty years from now about communications between creative talents or family members taking place today? How? THE MITFORDS: LETTERS BETWEEN SIX SISTERS is not only an immense achievement, it's eminently readable not only for the respective sisters' courses in life, but for their pained, sometimes frustrated, attempt to stay on each others' wavelengths after leaving home. As are so many books, this one is a product of the great wave of "Mitfordiana" that began in the 1970s and to some extent continues even today. Confirmed Mitford-ites must have this book; others may want to invest in it once they start to comprehend how influential -- and funny -- these six "girls" could be. Individually, they were imposing. Together, they changed Interwar England.