A Graphic Mitford Sisters Story

Pond, Mimi.  Do Admit!: The Mitford sisters and Me.   n.p.: Drawn & Quarterly Books, 2025.  

         ISBN: 9781770468047

 

 

So how much do you know of the Mitford Sisters?  Did you know that one was a personal friend of Adolf Hitler while another was a Communist who had traveled to Spain to cover the Civil War?  Or that several of the sisters became well-known authors in England and the United States?   Mimi Pond invites the reader to come with her on a graphic exploration of these sisters whose lives intersected with so much of 20th Century history.

Mimi Pond sets the stage for the entrance of the sisters with a graphic summarization of each sister in chronological order - Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah.  She follows this with an interlude of how she became interested in these British ladies while growing up in in 1960-1970s southern California.  During the rest of the book Mimi pops herself in briefly. Then it is back to 1920's England for the Mitford Sisters saga.  Pond takes the time to highlight each sister and the interactions they had with each other and the larger world as they grew.  Nancy became friends with a number of up and coming authors such as Brian Howard and Evelyn Waugh through her brother Tom and started mining her family for her writings.  Pamela tended to hang out in the countryside.  Diana married to get out of the house but then met up and flung herself upon Oswald Moseley who formed the British Union of Fascists.  Unity met and befriended Adolf Hitler while traveling in Germany.  She survived shooting herself in the head after Britain declared war on Germany in 1939.  Jessica had set up a "running away" fund at a local bank at age 12.  She used that fund to travel to Spain with radical journalist Esmond Romilly to cover the Spanish Civil War.  The two married and moved to the United States.  After Esmond's death as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, she married Bob Treuhaft, a civil right lawyer.  She later wrote several muckraking books such as The American Way of Death.  Deborah was know for her expressions, but her marriage to Andrew Cavendish  paid off when she became the Duchess of Devonshire at the age of 40.  The Cavendish's now had 5 country estates to care for and maintain with Chatsworth House being the most famous.  All the sisters' tales are followed until they reach their end.

 

Mimi Pond takes what could be a boring topic but with her drawings, page design, and text keep the reader exploring the lives of these women and learning the impact they had on history that most readers likely did not know.   This title provides an interesting picture into a family and a time fading into history that should be remembered! 

 

Fairy Tale Originators?

Harrington, Jane.  Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Forgotten Founding Mothers of the 

         Fairy Tale and the Stories That They Spun.  New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 

        2025.  ISBN: 9780762488704 

 

So who started the fairy tale craze?  It definitely was not the Brothers Grimm since they only compiled tales that they gathered from the country folks they interviewed.  Charles Perrault is often credited as the "Father of Fairy Tales" but maybe he should be credited as "Mother since his most famous creation is Mother Goose.  What is forgotten and not credited are the women who gathered in salons in the 1690s and later to write tales together.  They called themselves conteuses and would set challenges for the types of tales to write.  They would then come back together and compare tales.  

 

In Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance, Jane Harrington provides brief histories of seven of these women and one or two of their tales.  The women are Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy, Henriette-Julie Murat, Charlotte-Rose La Force, Marie-Jeanne L'Heritier, Catherine Bernard, Catherine Durand, and Louise D'Auneuil.  Also each tale has gorgeous illustrations created by Khoa Le. Harrington also provides a bibliography of sources so that interested parties can follow up on areas of interest. 

 

If the reader enjoys fairy tales, especially ones not well known, do pick up Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance!