Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) was born into the British aristocracy
and, by her own account, brought up without an education, except in
riding and French. She managed a London bookshop during the Second
World War, then moved to Paris, where she began to write her
celebrated and successful novels, among them The Pursuit of Love
and Love in a Cold Climate, about the foibles of the English upper
class. Mitford was also the author of four biographies: Madame de
Pompadour (1954), Voltaire in Love (1957), The Sun King (1966), and
Frederick the Great (1970)—all available as NYRB classics. In 1967
Mitford moved from Paris to Versailles, where she lived until her
death from Hodgkin’s disease.
Amanda Foreman was born in London in 1968 and educated at Sarah
Lawrence College, Columbia University, and Oxford University, where
she received a Ph.D. in history. She is the author of Georgiana,
Duchess of Devonshire, and A World on Fire; her new study, The
World Made by Women: A History of Womankind from the Age of
Cleopatra to the Era of Hillary Clinton, is forthcoming in 2016.
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