The story of Jessica Mitford, fifth of the six famous Mitford Girls, a British aristocrat-turned-American Communist, famous for exposés like The American Way of Death.
Doggedly researched and resolutely modern ... Refuses to reduce this most beautifully messy and complicated of Mitfords to bon mots, but her contributions to the language echo on past its rich footnotes.
Troublemaker logs Mitford’s travels and transformations with brio, even while Ms. Kaplan details accounts of the civil-rights causes Mitford threw herself into.
The sisters...feel appealingly literary — not just in their florid antics but in how they expressed themselves: glibly and colorfully. Their writings are composed of a densely referential, strangely alluring family argot, rich with nicknames and idioms ... To enter the Mitford industry in 2025 is to risk drawing prickly fact checks from devotees steeped in the lore.
