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For my part, I can't remember when I enjoyed a collection of journalism so much, or laughed out loud so often... It is also useful as, and intended to be useful as, a manual for doing the kind of journalism she did. Guardian Contains some of her finest work and is also a guide to becoming a top muckraker, complete with Mitford's list of essential qualities, such as 'an appetite for tracking and destroying the ennemy'. New Statesman I wish I could point to some overriding social purpose in these articles. Mitford laments in her introduction. However the lack of an explicit agenda is part of the collection's appeal: these are articles written with a keen eye for injustice, but also with a great sense of personal passion, and a generous, exuberant wit. Observer Most collections of journalistic pieces barely warrant being bound in book form: this one (from 1979) with its wit and irrepressible ebullience, genuinely makes a convincing classic of a sort. Scotsman

For my part, I can't remember when I enjoyed a collection of journalism so much, or laughed out loud so often... It is also useful as, and intended to be useful as, a manual for doing the kind of journalism she did. Guardian Contains some of her finest work and is also a guide to becoming a top muckraker, complete with Mitford's list of essential qualities, such as 'an appetite for tracking and destroying the ennemy'. New Statesman ""I wish I could point to some overriding social purpose in these articles."" Mitford laments in her introduction. However the lack of an explicit agenda is part of the collection's appeal: these are articles written with a keen eye for injustice, but also with a great sense of personal passion, and a generous, exuberant wit. Observer Most collections of journalistic pieces barely warrant being bound in book form: this one (from 1979) with its wit and irrepressible ebullience, genuinely makes a convincing ""classic"" of a sort. Scotsman

<p> Poison Penmanship &#160;was originally published in 1979....Its current reissue by New York Review Books&#160;is a welcome reminder of the author&rsquo;s reporting ingenuity. The book includes 17 pieces of journalism&mdash;a mere slice of the work that Mitford produced over the course of a 40-year career in letters, but a choice one.... Poison Penmanship &#160;would make an apt addition to any reporter&rsquo;s reading list. Mitford supplies research tips and instructive anecdotes alongside the pieces that her self-education yielded, providing a satisfying synthesis of theory and practice. &#160; &mdash; The Economist<br> <br> [Mitford's] excellent collection&#160; Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking&#160; has just been republished...A number of essays here concern the funeral business and how her expos&eacute; affected her life....Other selections include witty and trenchant pieces on the Famous Writers School, a shameful scam; the censoring of the subject of syphilis

<p> There is something rather fine about Mitford's tireless pursuit of her quarries, who include undertakers on the make, publishers peddling phony creative writing courses and the hapless bureaucrats she encounters during a brief and stormy spell as a professor..... These are articles written with a keen eye for injustice, but also with a great sense of personal passion, and a generous, exuberant wit. --Lettie Ransley, The Observer <br> .. .an exuberant enjoyment of the Gentle Art of Muckraking driven both by a hunger for justice and a love of the absurd.... Most collections of journalistic pieces barely warrant being bound in book form: this one (from 1979), with its wit and irrepressible ebullience, genuinely makes a convincing classic of a sort. -- The Scotsman <br> For my part, I can't remember when I enjoyed a collection of journalism so much, or laughed out loud so often. Spirited, extremely witty and sharp and, perhaps most importantly, driven by a powerful sens

"For my part, I can't remember when I enjoyed a collection of journalism so much, or laughed out loud so often... It is also useful as, and intended to be useful as, a manual for doing the kind of journalism she did. Guardian Contains some of her finest work and is also a guide to becoming a top muckraker, complete with Mitford's list of essential qualities, such as 'an appetite for tracking and destroying the ennemy'. New Statesman ""I wish I could point to some overriding social purpose in these articles."" Mitford laments in her introduction. However the lack of an explicit agenda is part of the collection's appeal: these are articles written with a keen eye for injustice, but also with a great sense of personal passion, and a generous, exuberant wit. Observer Most collections of journalistic pieces barely warrant being bound in book form: this one (from 1979) with its wit and irrepressible ebullience, genuinely makes a convincing ""classic"" of a sort. Scotsman"

Author Information

Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) was the daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale, and she and her five sisters and one brother grew up in isolation on their parents' Cotswold estate. Rebelling against her family's hidebound conservatism, Mitford became an outspoken socialist and, with her second cousin and husband-to-be Esmond Romilly, ran away to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Romilly was killed in World War II, and Mitford moved to America, where she married the lawyer and political activist Robert Treuhaft. A brilliant muckraking journalist, Mitford was the author of, among other works, a memoir of her youth, Hons and Rebels (also published as an NYRB Classic); a study of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death; and Kind and Unusual Punishment- The Prison Business. She died at the age of seventy-eight while working on a follow-up to The American Way of Death, for which, with characteristic humor, she proposed the title ""Death Warmed Over."" Jane Smiley, winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is the author of many novels and other works. In 2010 she published Private Life, a novel; A Good Horse, a book for young adults; and The Man Who Invented the Computer, the first volume of the Sloane American Inventors series.

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