Jessica Mitford

A revised version of an expose of the funeral industry includes new chapters on the practice of prepayment for funerals and other issues

The American Way of Death Revisited

In this "wonderfully funny and very poignant" (Philip Toynbee) autobiography, Mitford offers a fascinating study of the unusual upbringing of her famous family.

Hons and Rebels

American Way of Death

The American Way of Death

Nobles y rebeldes

Mitford's brave look at the funeral business, her attack on the Famous Writers School, and her war against a California University that insisted on fingerprinting her are accompanied by her running commentary on the strategies of muckraking journalism

The Gentle Art of Muckraking

Poison Penmanship

The famous, once-notorious, still-controversial writer and political activist chronicles her girlhood in England, her years with the American Communist Party, and her latter-day adventures as America's premier muckraker

A Fine Old Conflict

A candid examination of American prison practices based on the author's extensive research and workshop experiences as an inmate.

The Prison Business

Kind and Usual Punishment

A collection of irreverent and insightful letters by the larger-than-life wit, memoirist, investigative journalist, and activist chronicles Mitford's experiences in the worlds of politics, journalism, the arts, publishing, and society, in correspondence with Katharine Graham, Betty Friedan, Miss Manners, Julie Andrews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and her family. 20,000 first printing.

The Letters of Jessica Mitford

Decca

Jessica Mitford was a member of one of England’s most legendary families (among her sisters were the novelist Nancy Mitford and the current Duchess of Devonshire) and one of the great muckraking journalists of modern times. Leaving England for America, she pursued a career as an investigative reporter and unrepentant gadfly, publicizing not only the misdeeds of, most famously, the funeral business (The American Way of Death, a bestseller) and the prison business (Kind and Usual Punishment), but also of writing schools and weight-loss programs. Mitford’s diligence, unfailing skepticism, and acid pen made her one of the great chroniclers of the mischief people get up to in the pursuit of profit and the name of good. Poison Penmanship collects seventeen of Mitford’s finest pieces—about everything from crummy spas to network-TV censorship—and fills them out with the story of how she got the scoop and, no less fascinating, how the story developed after publication. The book is a delight to read: few journalists have ever been as funny as Mitford, or as gifted at getting around in those dark, cobwebbed corners where modern America fashions its shiny promises. It’s also an unequaled and necessary manual of the fine art of investigative reporting.

An expose on America's multimillion-dollar burial policy.

'Whenever I read the words 'Peer's Daughter' in a headline,' Lady Redesdale once sadly remarked, 'I know it's going to be something about one of you children.' The Mitford family is one of the century's most enigmatic, made notorious by Nancy's novels, Diana's marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, Unity's infatuation with Hitler, Debo's marriage to a duke and Jessica's passionate commitment to communism. An enchanting and deeply absorbing memoir of an isolated and eccentric upbringing which conceals beneath its witty, light-hearted surface much wisdom and depth of feeling.

Figlie e ribelli

Jessica Mitford, the great muckraking journalist, was part of a legendary English aristocratic family. Her sisters included Nancy, doyenne of the 1920s London smart set and a noted novelist and biographer; Diana, wife to the English fascist chief Sir Oswald Mosley; Unity, who fell head over in heels in love with Hitler; and Deborah, later the Duchess of Devonshire. Jessica swung left and moved to America, where she took part in the civil rights movement and wrote her classic exposé of the undertaking business, The American Way of Death. Hons and Rebels is the hugely entertaining tale of Mitford's upbringing, which was, as she dryly remarks, “not exactly conventional. . . Debo spent silent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of the look of pained concentration that comes over a hen's face when it is laying an egg. . . . Unity and I made up a complete language called Boudledidge, unintelligible to any but ourselves, in which we translated various dirty songs (for safe singing in front of the grown-ups).” But Mitford found her family's world as smothering as it was singular and, determined to escape it, she eloped with Esmond Romilly, Churchill's nephew, to go fight in the Spanish Civil War. The ensuing scandal, in which a British destroyer was dispatched to recover the two truants, inspires some of Mitford's funniest, and most pointed, pages. A family portrait, a tale of youthful folly and high-spirited adventure, a study in social history, a love story, Hons and Rebels is a delightful contribution to the autobiographer's art.

Jessica Mitford

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