Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1979) by Stephen Birmingham – Fontana

Some people have lives.

Other people have lives that require several surnames, an international press corps and enough photographs to fill a small archive.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was firmly in the second category.

Stephen Birmingham’s Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, published here by Fontana in 1979, takes a look at one of the twentieth century’s most recognisable women: admired, photographed, scrutinised, imitated and discussed to a degree that would make most people reconsider ever leaving the house.

Even the name tells a story.

Bouvier.

Kennedy.

Onassis.

Three chapters of one remarkable public life, each carrying its own associations with wealth, society, politics, tragedy, celebrity and the apparently endless fascination of newspapers with what one woman happened to be wearing.

Jacqueline Kennedy became internationally famous for elegance and composure, but reducing her to clothes and photographs rather misses the point.

Behind the immaculate public image was a woman navigating an extraordinary collection of circumstances while millions of strangers formed opinions about virtually everything she did.

Which must become exhausting fairly quickly.

She occupied a world of political power, high society, international travel and enormous wealth, yet also experienced devastating personal tragedy under a level of public observation almost impossible to imagine.

Privacy, unfortunately, becomes a complicated concept when photographers regard your trip to a restaurant as breaking news.

Birmingham explores the person behind that extraordinary public fascination, following the changes in her life and the different identities attached to her famous names.

There is Jacqueline Bouvier, the young woman from a privileged background.

Jacqueline Kennedy, the glamorous figure suddenly occupying one of the most visible positions in America.

And Jacqueline Onassis, whose later life produced an entirely new round of fascination, speculation and newspaper headlines.

Apparently one lifetime was not enough.

She became a style icon almost by accident of simply appearing in public extremely well dressed.

Clothes, hairstyles, furnishings and manners were studied with the seriousness normally reserved for international treaties.

If Jacqueline wore something, people wanted to know who made it.

If she changed something, people noticed.

If she attempted to disappear quietly, somebody generally photographed that too.

The result was an unusual kind of celebrity: part political history, part society legend and part cultural phenomenon.

And this biography comes from an interesting vantage point.

Published in 1979, it looks at Jacqueline Onassis while she was still very much a contemporary figure rather than the historical icon she would later become.

That gives the book the particular flavour of biography written while the public fascination was still active, immediate and occasionally rather breathless.

There is glamour here, inevitably.

Money.

Famous names.

Beautiful places.

Expensive clothes.

But there is also the less glamorous reality of living a life in which private decisions become public property almost instantly.

Celebrity may look wonderful from the outside.

It probably becomes less delightful when photographers are waiting outside the door.

For readers interested in twentieth-century biography, American society, celebrity culture and the strange intersection between public history and private life, this is a fascinating period account.

It is also a reminder that long before social media, people were perfectly capable of obsessively following somebody they had never met.

They simply had to wait for the magazine to arrive.

This copy is in Good condition, making it a nice vintage reading copy of a biography now itself firmly part of the period it describes.

Ideal for biography collectors, readers interested in Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, twentieth-century social history, fashion and celebrity culture, or anyone fascinated by the peculiar business of becoming so famous that even your sunglasses become culturally significant.

Sold by Crappy Old Books, where glamour is limited, paparazzi are discouraged, and nobody has yet photographed us leaving the post office.

ISBN: 0006356222
Condition: Good

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