The Pursuit of Love
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  • Published: 2 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241514993
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $24.99

The Pursuit of Love

Now a major series on BBC and Prime Video directed by Emily Mortimer and starring Lily James and Andrew Scott

Formats & editions
Paperback
3 Aug 2021
Paperback
18 Jun 2018
Paperback
1 Feb 2016
EBook
12 Nov 2015
Audiobook
24 Jun 2021
Paperback
2 Mar 2021
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The TV tie-in of Nancy Mitford's classic novel to coincide with the BBC adaptation starring Lily James

In one of the wittiest novels of them all, Nancy Mitford casts a finely gauged net to capture perfectly the foibles and fancies of the English upper class. Set in the privileged world of the county house party and the London season, this is a comedy of English manners between the wars by one of the most individual, beguiling and creative users of the language.
  • Published: 2 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241514993
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $24.99
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About the author

Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford was born in London on November 28 1904, daughter of the second Baron Redesdale, and the eldest of six girls. Her sisters included Lady Diana Mosley; Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire and Jessica, who immortalised the Mitford family in her autobiography Hons and Rebels. The Mitford sisters came of age during the Roaring Twenties and wartime in London, and were well known for their beauty, upper-class bohemianism or political allegiances. Nancy contributed columns to The Lady and the Sunday Times, as well as writing a series of popular novels including The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, which detailed the high-society affairs of the six Radlett sisters. While working in London during the Blitz, Nancy met and fell in love with Gaston Palewski, General de Gaulle's chief of staff, and eventually moved to Paris to be near him. In the 1950s she began writing historical biographies - her life of Louis XIV, The Sun King, became an international bestseller. Nancy completed her last book, Frederick the Great, before she died of Hodgkin's disease on 30 June 1973.

Also by Nancy Mitford

Love in a Cold Climate & The Pursuit of Love
Penguin Readers Level 5: The Pursuit of Love (ELT Graded Reader)
Highland Fling
Christmas Pudding
The Complete Novels
Don't Tell Alfred
The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford
See all

Praise for The Pursuit of Love

Utter, utter bliss

Daily Mail

A dazzling comic delight

Fiona Wilson, The Times, Saturday Review

The story's genius lies in its wicked humour, which remains relentlessly uplifting even as the Blitz begin to smash all the hopes of that pre-war arcadia

Olivia Laing, The Guardian

Too spiky and intelligent, I think, to qualify as an altogether cosy read [...] beneath the brittle surface of Mitford's wit there is something infinitely more melancholy at work - something that is apt to snag you and pull you into its dark undertow when you are least expecting it

Zoë Heller, The Telegraph

Nancy Mitford taught the wonderful truth that laughter can see you through the darkest hours of your life

Daily Mail

The Millennial faint-hearted will be appalled by Mitford's depiction of class and gender. But Mitford's triumph is that, as the Radletts live and laugh and cry, we [cry] with them

Julie Parsons, The Irish Times

In her novels Nancy mastered her life, making everyone who was different or difficult into figures of mirth, moving only among the aristocracy, and infusing the world with a spirit of lazy, delightful romance

Natasha Walter, The Independent
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