Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford with Editor Peter Y. Sussman

Jessica Mitford is best known as the author of The American Way of Death, her withering 1963 exposé of the funeral industry. The book profoundly changed that industry and earned Mitford the title Queen of Muckrackers. 

A celebrated wit with nine other books to her credit, Mitford was the “red sheep” of her aristocratic English family. Known by her childhood nickname Decca, her rebellious actions included identifying as a socialist at 15; eloping at 19 with her second cousin, Esmond Romilly, to the Spanish Civil War; joining the American Communist Party; refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee; and passionately crusading for civil rights. 

For more than five decades, Mitford lived in Oakland, near the Berkeley border. For her entire life, she was a prolific letter writer.

Peter Y. Sussman, an award-winning journalist and friend of Mitford and her second husband, Robert Treuhaft, culled and edited her lively correspondence to produce Decca:The Letters of Jessica Mitford. A critic for The London Sunday Times praised Sussman as “a sublime editor” who produced “one of the funniest, most enthralling, and gloriously honest collections of contemporary letters I have yet read." 

On Wednesday, May 6, at 7 p.m., Sussman will discuss Mitford's storied life as a blue-blooded rebel, one of the six famous — and infamous — Mitford sisters and explain how he selected and edited the letters. As an added treat, veteran actor Anne Bernstein will join Sussman to read from some of them.

Tickets for Sussman’s talk are $5 for club members and students and $10 for non-members. 

Alfred Knopf published Decca:The Letters of Jessica Mitford in 2006. The Random House Vintage imprint released the paperback edition last year, thanks to renewed interest in the fascinating lives of the Mitfords.

The book includes letters written from 1924, when Mitford was seven, to shortly before she died at 78 of lung cancer. They chronicle her elopement with Romilly, who had fought and was wounded in Spain; their move to America; his death in World War II; her subsequent marriage to Treuhaft, an American labor lawyer; and her lifelong dedication to social action. The letters also document her relationships with her sisters and the impressive range of her correspondents, among them Katharine Graham, Betty Friedan, Robert Gottlieb, Julie Andrews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

To put the letters in context and to explain the insider jokes, historical references, and backgrounds of their recipients, Sussman organized them into nine chronological sections, adding illuminating introductions to each and footnoting the letters.

The book garnered glowing reviews in major newspapers and magazines across the English-speaking world. Publisher’s Weekly praised Sussman for gathering “an array of letters that capture Mitford’s legendary wit, warmth, and self-deprecating humor: decades of exuberant — and sometimes sparring — correspondence.”

Sussman, whose wife Patricia Carson Sussman is a longtime BCC member, spent 29 years as an editor at The San Francisco Chronicle. He left in 1993 but continued working as a freelance writer, editor, teacher, and mentor. He focuses on issues related to press freedom, journalism ethics, and diversity. Recently, he has established himself as a talented photographer. 

His first book, co-authored with bank robber Dannie M. Martin, was published in 1993 by W. W. Norton.

Invite your family and friends to join you for this entertaining evening that will bring the inimitable Jessica Mitford to life through her letters.You undoubtedly will leave regretting the invention of e-mail and text messages.

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