Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford - Paperback

by Jessica Mitford (Author), Peter Y. Sussman (Editor)

Born into the British aristocracy as one of the famous (and sometimes infamous), larger-than-life Mitford sisters, Jessica "Decca" Mitford ran away first to Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and then to America. She became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, then embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist. 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 that attests to her extensive experience in 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.

Edited by Peter Y. Sussman.

Author Biography

Jessica Mitford is also the author of Hons and Rebels (previously published as Daughters and Rebels), The American Way of Death, The Trial of Dr. Spock, Kind and Usual Punishment, A Fine Old Conflict, Poison Penmanship, Faces of Philip: A Memoir of Philip Toynbee, Grace Had an English Heart, and The American Way of Birth. Until her death in 1996, she lived in Oakland, California, with her husband, labor lawyer Robert Treuhaft.

Peter Y. Sussman was an award-winning editor at the San Francisco Chronicle from 1964 to 1993 and has written, edited, taught, and lectured widely since then. He is the coauthor of Committing Journalism and was a coauthor of the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics. He lives in Berkeley, California.