Books: Notorious Great-Aunt

ALL THIS, AND HEAVEN TOO—Rachel Field—Macmillan ($2.50).

When her subject is right, as it was in Time Out of Mind and Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, Rachel Field can do it up brown. Her robust whimsicality, freshness and charm rank her, without disparagement, as the Louisa May Alcott of contemporary writers. All this, and Heaven too, the "true" story of her great-aunt, Henriette Desportes Field, is a Rachel Field natural.

Henriette was the notorious governess, "Mademoiselle D," who in 1847 was one of the central figures in the internationally famous murder trial, in Paris, of the Duc de Praslin, who was accused of...

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