About Jessica Mitford
Jessica Lucy "Decca" Treuhaft (née Freeman-Mitford, later Romilly; 11 September 1917 – 23 July 1996) was an English-American author, communist activist and one of the Mitford sisters. Her 1960 memoir Hons and Rebels and her 1963 book of social commentary The American Way of Death both became classics. Jessica married her second cousin Esmond Romilly, emigrating to the United States in 1939. Romilly was reported missing in action in 1941 and, in 1943, Mitford married American civil rights lawyer Robert Treuhaft, with whom she worked closely in the Civil Rights Congress. She took American citizenship in 1944. The couple joined the Communist Party USA and refused to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. == Early life and ancestry == Born at Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire, the sixth of seven children, Jessica Mitford was the daughter of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife Sydney (daughter of politician and publisher Thomas Gibson Bowles). She was one of the Mitford sisters: Nancy (1904–1973), Pamela (1907–1994), Diana (1910–2003), Unity (1914–1948), Jessica, and Deborah (1920–2014). The sisters had one brother, Tom, who in 1945 was killed in action at the age of 36. Refused permission by her parents to attend school, Jessica was educated at home by governesses, and increasingly rebelled against her heavily circumscribed home life.
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