‘…nothing is less in our power than the heart, which is more apt to command than to obey.’

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Jane Smiley

Let’s pretend that we know no more of Nancy Mitford than we do of Shakespeare, that we have a tempting outline of her life with one or two intriguing details, but no family notoriety, no volumes of letters, no newspaper articles or gossip.  In fact, let’s pretend that Nancy Mitford’s novels weren’t written by the famous Nancy Mitford but by some entirely obscure Mary Smith, who happened to be a middle-class daughter of a greengrocer, possessed of ambition, eloquence, and extraordinary powers of observation.  If we did so, how would the novels hold up?

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