Jessica Mitford and Her Sisters, In Print: Which Story Is True?
Carla Kaplan examines the Mitford sisters' competing autobiographies with Constancia Romilly, Mitford's daughter, at the Grolier Club. Free and livestreamed.
Why we picked this
The Mitford sisters wrote prolifically about each other and almost never agreed. Having their libraries and archives in the same room as someone who knew one of them personally — and a scholar who has spent a career in those papers — is a genuinely unusual evening.
The Mitford sisters are one of English literary history’s most improbable story factories: six daughters of an eccentric Cotswold aristocrat who became, respectively, a Communist activist and journalist, a Nazi sympathizer, a fascist, a Duchess, a children’s book author, and a conservative politician. They also wrote extensively about each other, producing memoirs and letters that contradict each other in fascinating and revealing ways.
Carla Kaplan, author of Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford, examines the literary output of all six sisters — focusing on the contrasting autobiographical accounts, the family tensions their writings created, and what the gaps and discrepancies between their versions reveal. Kaplan has spent years in their archives; her presentation draws on rare materials held at various libraries.
The conversation will include Constancia Romilly, Jessica Mitford’s daughter, adding a dimension that no amount of archival research can replicate. The event is free, open to the public, and will be livestreamed for those who cannot attend in person.