Nancy Mitford
Nancy Mitford (November 28, 1904 -1973), novelist and biographer, was born in London, the eldest daughter of Baron Redesdale. She is one of the noted Mitford sisters, was an essayist in, and editor of, Noblesse Oblige (1956), in which she helped to originate the famous 'U', or upper-class, and 'non-U' classification of linguistic usage and behaviour (see U and non-U English). She is best known for her series of novels about upper-class life. In 1933, after a going-nowhere romance with homosexual Scottish aristocrat Hamish St. Clair Erskine, she married Peter Rodd, the youngest son of Sir Rennell Rodd. (Sir Rennell was a British ambassador to Italy, a former poet, and possibly a one-time lover of Oscar Wilde according to historian Neil McKenna.) The Rodds, who were separated for many years, were divorced in 1958. At the end of World War II she moved to Paris, France, where she became involved with French statesman Col. Gaston Palewski. The largely one-sided affair, which inspired the romance between Linda Kroesig and Fabrice de Sauveterre in Mitford's novel "'The Pursuit of Love"', lasted fitfully until Palewski's affair with and eventual 1969 marriage to Violette de Talleyrand-Périgord, Duchess of Sagan (1915-2003), a beautiful socialite who was the former wife of Count James de Pourtalés and a granddaughter of American railroad magnate Jay Gould. Nancy Mitford died on June 30, 1973 in Versailles, France. Her remains were brought home to England and interred in the Swinbrook Churchyard, Oxfordshire, England with those of her younger sister, Unity Mitford (1914-1948). She was the author of: Highland Fling (1931)Christmas Pudding (1932)Wigs on the Green (1935)Pigeon Pie (1940)The Pursuit of Love (1945)Love in a Cold Climate (1949)The Blessing (1951)Madame de Pompadour (1954)Voltaire in Love (1957)Don't Tell Alfred (1960)The Water Beetle (1962)The Sun King (1966) Frederick the Great (1970)
External linkLiterary Encyclopedia: Nancy Mitford
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