Born into the British aristocracy as one of the famous (and sometimes infamous), larger-than-life Mitford sisters, Jessica “Decca” Mitford ran away first to Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and then to America. She became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, then embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist. She was a celebrated wit, a charmer, and throughout her life a prolific and passionate writer of letters—now gathered here.

Decca’s correspondence crackles with irreverent humor and mischief and with acute insight into human behavior that attests to her extensive experience in the worlds of politics, the arts, journalism, publishing, and high and low society. Here is correspondence with everyone from Katharine Graham and George Jackson, Betty Friedan, Miss Manners, Julie Andrews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Decca’s sisters the Duchess of Devonshire and the novelist Nancy Mitford, her parents, her husbands, her children, and her grandchildren.

Edited by Peter Y. Sussman.