Lecture | Jessica Mitford and Her Sisters, In Print: Which Story is True?

Acclaimed biographer Carla Kaplan, author of Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford (HarperCollins), will explore the print and manuscript culture of Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) and her five sisters, members of a famous British literary family. They wrote autobiographical novels and memoirs, offering wildly contrasting accounts of one another. Jessica had escaped a cosseted childhood in a Cotswold manor to become a California-based Communist and then muckraker. With her 1960 memoir—fond, funny, and often teasing of her equally celebrated (or notorious) relatives—she hoped to come closer to the family she’d left behind. But instead, the book, which was lauded and sold well in the U.K. and America, worsened the rifts. This talk will shed light on what the sisters wrote and published, with different lenses on their upbringing, as well as their libraries and Kaplan’s own book collection, which includes Mitford's rare mimeographed books and archival documentation of wranglings with publishers. Kaplan will be in conversation with Mitford's daughter Constancia Romilly.

Carla Kaplan, author of Troublemaker, is a professor of English, African-American and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University and holds the Davis Distinguished Professorship in American Literature. She contributes to publications including The New York Times, and among her award-winning books are Miss Anne in Harlem: the White Women of the Black Renaissance and a biography of Zora Neale Hurston. Kaplan founded the Northeastern Humanities Center and has been a resident fellow at institutions including New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Harvard University’s Houghton Library and W.E.B. DuBois Research Institute; University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center; Yale University's Beinecke Library; Massachusetts Historical Society, the Ohio State University, and Smith College.

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