Love from Nancy CL

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. (Dec.)