Half a century before the Hiltons danced on tables, the Simpsons got surgery, or the Spears girls were impregnated, the six beautiful, witty, and weird Mitford debutantes defined the tabloid sister act with a very British style and substance. The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley, is the first entry in a decades-long spate of Mitford memorabilia that lets the notorious family — whose friends included Evelyn Waugh, Maya Angelou, Adolf Hitler, and JFK, among others — speak for itself.

The daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale have been the subject of dozens of memoirs, musicals, and movies: Nancy, the scathing wit and novelist who made a generation fall in love with the Mitfords' fictionalized childhood; Diana, the fascist beauty imprisoned during World War II; Pam, the only sister who sought a quiet country life; Unity, who befriended Hitler and shot herself when England and Germany declared war; Jessica, the Communist muckraker; and Deborah, who became the Duchess of Devonshire. As their long-suffering mother once famously told them, "Whenever I see a headline beginning with 'Peer's Daughter,' I know one of you children has been in trouble."

The letters are chockablock with Mitford vernacular, private jokes (the sisters called pregnancy "smacking your ovary and sending it to Madame Bovary"), nicknames (Nancy and Jessica are "Susan" or "Soo"; Jessica and Deborah are "Hen" or "Henderson"; Unity and Jessica are "Boud"), and made-up languages. In one curious instance, twelve-year-old Jessica ("Decca") wrote to Diana ("Cord") and enclosed a stitch from her appendectomy with instructions to give half to Diana's new husband.

Even when wartime divided the sisters politically, their droll girlishness remained, as when Deborah thanked Diana for a heavenly evening bag — a "HEVERN eveninger" — adding, "I even forgive you being a fascist," and Unity surreally bemoaned Hitler's fate in 1934: "Poor sweet Fuhrer, he's having such a dreadful time," echoing the attitudes of many British aristocrats between the wars.

In this age of vapid celebrity sisterhoods, the Mitfords' humor and verve are more refreshing than ever. This sparkling collection presents them as the newsmakers they were, and, more fascinatingly, as the family we never knew them to be.

-Molly Boyle