Nancy Mitford

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NM is best-known for her novels, witty comedies of twentieth-century manners which draw on her own privileged background. Her accounts of love and disappointment among the upper classes frequently include political references (fascism, communism) or have wartime settings (Spanish Civil War, World War Two). She also wrote biography, translation, and essays and journalism including a famous squib about the way the English language reflects the social class of the speaker.
  • BirthName: Nancy Mitford
  • Married: Rodd; the Honourable Mrs Peter Rodd
    This is how Evelyn Waugh addressed her when they appeared together in Noblesse Oblige, edited by NM .
  • Styled: The Honourable
    When her father became a baron, the teenage NM and her sisters acquired this courtesy title. They were amused by it, and called themselves Hons.
Head-and-shoulders drawing of Nancy Mitford by William Acton, 1937. Her dark, wavy hair is parted in the centre; her bare shoulders rise smoothly from the background.

Milestones

28 November 1904

NM was born at 1 Graham Street, London, the eldest of her family.
Hastings, Selina. Nancy Mitford: A Biography. Hamish Hamilton, 1985.
5, 7

10 December 1945

NM 's novel The Pursuit of Love was published; it became instantly successful.
Mitford, Nancy. “Critical Materials”. Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, edited by Charlotte Mosley, Hodder and Stoughton, 1993, p. various pages.
124
Hastings, Selina. Nancy Mitford: A Biography. Hamish Hamilton, 1985.
165

1970

NM 's last biography, Frederick the Great, was published.
Hastings, Selina. Nancy Mitford: A Biography. Hamish Hamilton, 1985.
222
Mitford, Nancy. “Critical Materials”. Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, edited by Charlotte Mosley, Hodder and Stoughton, 1993, p. various pages.
xxi

30 June 1973

NM died at her home in Versailles, from Hodgkin's Disease, a kind of cancer which begins in the lymph nodes.
Hastings, Selina. Nancy Mitford: A Biography. Hamish Hamilton, 1985.
239, 254, 255

Biography

Birth and Family

28 November 1904

NM was born at 1 Graham Street, London, the eldest of her family.
Hastings, Selina. Nancy Mitford: A Biography. Hamish Hamilton, 1985.
5, 7

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