Jessica Mitford
Jessica Mitford
Jessica Lucy Freeman-Mitfordwas an English author, journalist, civil rights activist and political campaigner, and was one of the Mitford sisters. She became an American citizen in 1944...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth11 September 1917
CountryUnited States of America
book reading years
A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.
summer growing-up spring
Growing up in the English countryside seemed an interminable process. Freezing winter gave way to frosty spring, which in turn merged into chilly summer-but nothing ever, ever happened.
jobs thinking circles
One is only really inwardly comfortable, so to speak, after one's life has assumed some sort of shape. Not just a routine, like studying or a job or being a housewife, but something more complete than all those, which would include goals set by oneself and a circle of life-time type friends. I think this is one of the hardest things to achieve, in fact often just trying doesn't achieve it but rather it seems to develop almost by accident.
running america office
Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.'
running mean america
Things on the whole are faster in America; people don't stand for election, they run for office. If a person says he's sick, it doesn't mean regurgitating, it means ill. Mad means angry, not insane. Don't ask for the left-luggage; it's called a checkroom.
funeral industry
Now there is a society where the funeral industry got completely out of control.
writing trying world
the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you've been writing about. You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty.
ambition lexicographer firsts
Funeralese has had its ups and downs. The word 'morticians,' first used in Embalmers Monthly for February, 1895, was barred by the Chicago Tribune in 1932, 'not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven't the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.
sister-in-law want my-sister
I have nothing against undertakers personally. It's just that I wouldn't want one to bury my sister.
enemy important passing
Enemies are, to me, as important as friends in my life, and when they die I mourn their passing.
pain reassuring childbirth
It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth.
call cars coffin folk folks haven luck people run shake stop streets students urgent walking william
Walking through the streets of New Haven (Conn.) with William Sloane Coffin Jr. is like being in a movie about a small-town folk hero. People come up to shake his hand, students run after him with urgent questions, old folks stop their cars to call out, 'Good luck Bill!' and 'Howdy, Reverend.