6.8 /10 1 Votes
Language English Publication date 1935 Country United Kingdom | 3.4/5 Goodreads Publisher Thornton Butterworth Originally published 1935 Genre Fiction | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Similar Works by Nancy Mitford, Fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wigs on the Green is a novel by Nancy Mitford, first published in 1935. A merciless satire of British Fascism, the book is notable for lampooning the political enthusiasms of Mitford's sisters Unity Mitford and Diana Mosley. 2010 saw its first reprint in the United Kingdom and the United States in more than thirty-five years.
Background
Using her sisters' wild fervor for Fascism (and, in Unity's case, Adolf Hitler and Nazism) as fodder for her satire, Nancy Mitford originally constellated her plot around the character of General Jack, leader of the Blackshirts (an obvious double for Diana's lover and future husband Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists) and styled Eugenia Malmains after Unity. Mitford, always fond of cruel teases, was taken aback when Diana took offense to the novel and tried to placate her sister by excising the three chapters that dealt directly with her husband's caricature. Nevertheless, the book created a deep rift between the sisters.
When asked to republish the book after World War II, Mitford declined. The book was never republished in her lifetime.