Jessica Mitford (1917–1996)   The American Way of Death LINKS No links found. BIOGRAPHY Jessica Mitford (1917–1996)  One of six sisters, Mitford was born in Gloucestershire, England, into an aristocratic and rather eccentric family. She was educated at home and early adopted political views that contrasted violently with those of her sister Diana, who married Sir Oswald Mosley, the pre–World War II leader of the British Fascist movement. Jessica, on the other hand, traveled to Loyalist Spain during its civil war, where she met her first husband. He was killed in action during World War II, and she later married a labor lawyer. They moved to California and joined the Communist party. They left the party in 1958, and Jessica embarked on a successful career as a muckraking journalist and writer. Her first work, Lifeitselfmanship, was privately published in 1956, but her attack on the funeral industry in The American Way of Death (1963) established her reputation as an incisive and witty enemy of social and economic pretentiousness. Her many books include Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business (1973), the autobiographical A Fine Old Conflict (1979), and a collection of articles, Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (1979).