Mitford, Nancy, 1904–73, English novelist and biographer, b. London. She managed a London bookshop during World War II and moved to Paris in 1945. Mitford was born into the British aristocracy, which she satirizes in her novels, notably In Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949). Her writing is sophisticated, malicious, and captivating. Indeed, her boring, bigoted, illiterate lords and amoral, irresponsible ladies have taken on the qualities of myth. She also wrote biographies of Madame de Pompadour (1954) and Frederick the Great (1970).

Bibliography

See her letters (1993); correspondence with E. Waugh (1997), ed. by C. Mosley; memoir (1976) by H. Acton; biography (1986) by S. Hastings.

Mitford's sister

Jessica Mitford, 1917–96, b. Gloucestershire, England, also a writer, is known for her witty and irreverent polemics. Her works include The American Way of Death (1963; rev. ed. 1998), a scathing exposé of American funeral homes; Kind and Usual Punishment (1973), a critical study of the brutality of American prisons; and The American Way of Birth (1992), an indictment of the overuse of cesarean sections cesarean section (sĭzâr`ēən), delivery of an infant by surgical removal from the uterus through an abdominal incision.
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Bibliography

See her autobiography (1960, repr. 1981, 2004) and her memoirs of her early days as a Communist (1977); P. Y. Sussman, ed., Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford (2006); see also J. Guinness, House of Mitford (1984), and M. S. Lovell, The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (2002).

Mitford, Nancy

(born Nov. 28, 1904, London, Eng.—died June 30, 1973, Versailles, France) British writer. Born into an eccentric, aristocratic family, she became known for her witty satiric novels of upper-class life, including the quasi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love (1945), Love in a Cold Climate (1949), The Blessing (1951), and Don't Tell Alfred (1960). A volume of essays she coedited, Noblesse Oblige (1956), popularized the distinction between linguistic usages that are “U” (upper-class) and “non-U.” Her sister Jessica (1917–96) was a noted writer on U.S. society whose best-known book was The American Way of Death (1963).