The Bookshop At 10 Curzon Street: Letters Between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952-1973

Nancy Mitford was a brilliant personality, a remarkable novelist and a legendary letter writer. It is not widely known that she was also a bookseller. From 1942 to 1946 she worked in Heywood Hill's famous shop in Curzon Street, and effectively ran it when the male staff were called up for war service. After the war she left to live in France, but she maintained an abiding interest in the shop, its stock, and the many and varied customers who themselves form a cavalcade of the literary stars of post-war Britain. Her letters to Heywood Hill advise on recent French titles that might appeal to him and his customers, gossip engagingly about life in Paris, and enquire anxiously about the reception of her own books, while seeking advice about new titles to read. In return Heywood kept her up to date with customers and their foibles, and with aspects of literary and bookish life in London. Charming, witty, utterly irresistible, the correspondence gives brilliant insights into a world that has almost disappeared.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member LyzzyBee

Acquired via BookCrossing 08 Jul 2009 - bookring

Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill, who ran the bookshop at which she worked in the 1940s - they maintained a correspondance up until her death in the 1970s. As jolly but not as inpenetrable as some of the letters between the Mitford

sisters, these give a lovely flavour of a close and supportive friendship.

A delightful set of letters that I've devoured over a few days (I thought I should get it read, lest it disappear into the TBR's yawning chasm) - I am having a bit of a Mitford Fest at the moment as also working my way through the complete letters, but this filled in some gaps and it was lovely having Heywood Hill's letters too. Intriguing how the editor of the book gets into its latter stages himself. Oh, and I'll definitely have a look into the bookshop, as it's still going apparently!

Show Less

4 more

LibraryThing member Summermoonstone

This was so interesting. I have read so may books by and about the Mitford family but we all show different personas to different people - friends, family, work etc. And this is Nancy with a friend .... away from the confines of being "a Mitford" (if she ever was). Very interesting

LibraryThing member JBD1

A collection of letters between Nancy Mitford and bookseller Heywood Hill. I wish these had been less heavily excerpted and slightly more annotated; I would have liked more material and more context for them. That said, what's here makes for fun reading (even if it's not quite 84, Charing Cross

Road).

Show Less

LibraryThing member heggiep

Once again, it's difficult to give a book of this type a very high rating but it was a nice summer read. Both, but especially NM, exude class, intelligence, wit, humaneness, self-knowledge and quiet self-confidence. The whole nine yards.

LibraryThing member murderbydeath

Here's the thing about publishing a person's letters post mortem: they were written to friends - in this case one, very good, very long-time friend - and as such contain all sorts of personal references, names of mutual friends, inside jokes, and most frustratingly, a shorthand form of

communication built up over years that's really only obvious to the correspondents themselves. The editor Johns Saumerez Smith, does his best to clarify as much as possible, but there's quite a lot that went over my head regardless.

In addition to the insider knowledge required to really, really appreciate this collection, Johns Saumerez Smith, in an effort at conciseness, interest, and probably respect of Haywood's and Mitford's privacy, edited each letter down to the bits he felt were humorous, with the effect that as a reader, I felt a bit frustrated - because references would be made to one thing or another in one letter that were never followed up on in subsequent letters. There are letters in their chain of correspondence that are missing in the archives, and Johns Saumerez Smith did his best to summarise (I assume from other sources) the gaps. But the one thing that really irritated me is that Saumerez Smith left out letters that exist but have already been published in one of the other 2 broader collections of Mitford's letters, making the (erroneous in my case) assumption that the reader had already seen them, because, of course, the reader would have already read both the other collections.

Overall though, I enjoyed this glimpse into Mitford's life, and the drama at the Haywood Hill bookshop ... I wish they'd discussed it more and in fuller detail; it sounds like quite a drama. A lot of joy comes through though, and a lot of irreverence, so that even if I didn't understand all the references, I enjoyed the glimpse I got into a valued friendship.

Show Less

Fewer