Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) was born into the British aristocracy
and, by her own account, brought up without an education, except in
riding and French. She managed a London bookshop during the Second
World War, then moved to Paris, where she began to write her
celebrated and successful novels, among them The Pursuit of Love
and Love in a Cold Climate, about the foibles of the English upper
class. Mitford was also the author of four biographies: Madame de
Pompadour (1954), Voltaire in Love (1957), The Sun King (1966), and
Frederick the Great (1970)—all available as NYRB Classics. In 1967
Mitford moved from Paris to Versailles, where she lived until her
death from Hodgkin’s disease.
Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1987,
writing often on French life and literature. His many books include
Paris to the Moon, an anthropology of modern French manners, and
The Table Comes First, an essay on the philosophy of eating. He has
also written introductions to new editions of works by authors such
as Balzac, Alain-Fournier, Hugo, and Maupassant. In 2012, Gopnik
was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.
“Mitford writes with a profound sympathy for the 17th and 18th
century, and Voltaire in Love caps her career as the nonpareil
popular biographer of that era” – Michael Dirda, The Washington
Post
“Voltaire in Love is Nancy Mitford’s most searching book. On the
surface it is all polish and wit: underneath it is solid history.”
– Time
“In this substantial but wonderfully gay and gossipy book, Miss
Mitford details with a zest that is wholly engaging the idyllic
moments and the hectic hours that marked the long association of
these enormously intelligent lovers.” – The New Yorker
“A superb, if somewhat bawdy, tale, a true story surpassing mortal
invention.” – Chicago Sunday Tribune
“A polished and entertaining piece of work.” – Atlantic Monthly
“For anyone who relishes historical fiction and high romance, Nancy
Mitford's Voltaire In Love is a modern classic." - The
Spectator
“In Voltaire in Love Miss Mitford contributes much of her
own. Her style is, as always vivacious, the narrative headlong, the
incidental humor often suitably wry….Miss Mitford is not concerned
in her biographies with the inner motivations of her subjects. They
enact their story upon her pages, they speak their lines, and they
keep the reader absorbed and awake. In their way, because they are
stamped with the creator’s individuality, Miss Mitford’s books are
works of art.” – The New York Times
“There are many accounts of their stormy, and highly productive,
ménage à trois. Nancy Mitford once wrote a diverting book about it,
Voltaire in Love (1957), which she described as less of a biography
and more ‘a Kinsey report on his romps with Mme du Châtelet.’ Both
sexually and intellectually, it was a time of high
stimulation.” -- Richard Holmes, The New York Review of
Books
“We see something of the other side of moon that was Voltaire in
Nancy Mitford’s splendidly suave and entertaining book about him,
Voltaire in Love. This is the best thing she has ever written. It
brings into play the style and the interests she displayed in her
biography, Madame de Pompadour, and in at least of her novels, Love
in the Cold Climate. Her approach to the dramatist and philosopher
is through his long liason with a lady who excelled at mathematics
and treatises on the widening field of science. This is as odd an
alliance for a more worldly passion as anyone could hope to find,
and Miss Mitford makes the most of the Voltairean jest of it….Her
object is to take Voltaire away from the encyclopedias and the
histories and show us the private life of a great encyclopedist and
historian. She does that with casual excellence, scribbling a
lively portrait of an age as well as her two leading characters’
furies and felicities.” – The New York Times
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