The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The Pursuit of Love

Author: Nancy Mitford

Narrator: Bessie Carter

Unabridged: 7 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/17/2021


Synopsis

Mitford's most enduringly popular novel, The Pursuit of Love is a classic comedy about growing up and falling in love among the privileged and eccentric.

Mitford modeled her characters on her own famously unconventional family. We are introduced to the Radletts through the eyes of their cousin Fanny, who stays with them at Alconleigh, their Gloucestershire estate. Uncle Matthew is the blustering patriarch, known to hunt his children when foxes are scarce; Aunt Sadie is the vague but doting mother; and the seven Radlett children, despite the delights of their unusual childhood, are recklessly eager to grow up.

The first of three novels featuring these characters, The Pursuit of Love follows the travails of Linda, the most beautiful and wayward Radlett daughter, who falls first for a stuffy Tory politician, then an ardent Communist, and finally a French duke named Fabrice.

About Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford, daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale and the eldest of the six legendary Mitford sisters, was born in 1904 and educated at home on the family estate in Oxfordshire. She made her debut in London and soon became one of the bright young things of the 1920s, a close friend of Henry Green, Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, and their circle. A beauty and a wit, she began writing for magazines and writing novels while she was still in her twenties. In all, she wrote eight novels as well as biographies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, Louis XIV, and Frederick the Great. She died in 1973.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kelly on May 30, 2011

Dulling, dulling! You must! Simply must read this! It’s just too unfair the way Nancy could write this! We do not all have such an excellent family for material. Did you know my dear that Nancy’s sister herself said she had no imagination? It’s too true, darling! Pursuit of Love was how she found ou......more

Goodreads review by Maya on January 14, 2023

It’s not often that I’m inclined to agree with the Daily Mail, but I’d have to concur with them when they describe the experience of reading this novel as “pure bliss”. Nancy Mitford’s brand of warm-hearted, gentle, good-faith satire - devoid of any cynicism or defensiveness - is somehow wittier and......more

Goodreads review by Susan's Reviews on August 24, 2021

See my reviews for each of Nancy Mitford's novels in this series. I read these decades ago, before they were adapted into the TV series. We have it on good authority, (her eldest sister, the Duchess, wrote an autobiography and it backs up that just about everything in these novels was taken from Nanc......more