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Biography of Nancy Langhorne AstorName: Nancy Langhorne AstorBirth Date: May 19, 1879 Death Date: May 2, 1964 Place of Birth: Danville, Virginia, United States Nationality: American Gender: Female Occupations: member of parliament Nancy Langhorne Astor American-born Nancy Langhorne Astor (1879-1964) became the first woman to serve as a member of the British Parliament, a position she held from 1919 to 1945.Born in Danville, Virginia, on May 19, 1879, Nancy Langhorne grew up in the straitened circumstances of the post-Civil War South. Financial success eluded her father, Chiswell Dabney Langhorne, a former Confederate officer, until the 1890s. Then contracts with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad paid off, and thereafter he amassed considerable wealth. In 1892 he bought an estate, Mirador, near Charlottesville, where she spent her adolescence. She had seven brothers and sisters, one of whom, Irene, became the celebrated "Gibson girl" painted by her artist husband, Charles Dana Gibson.Her family experience provided some of the basis for her later feminism. Her father exerted tyrannical rule, and her mother, Nancy Witcher Langhorne, accepted his authority and the conventional feminine role. Worn out by repeated unwanted pregnancies (she had 11 children, eight …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…sum up the character of this remarkable woman. Further Reading Nancy herself wrote two books: My Two Countries (1923) and The Astor Story (1951, the latter her memoir. Her son Michael's Tribal Feeling (1963) provides further information about the family. The numerous biographies include Maurice Collis, Nancy Astor and Her Friends (1974), which provides many direct statements made by Astor taken from unpublished as well as published sources, some of which have been included in this article. Grigg, John, Nancy Astor, a lady unashamed, Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.Grigg, John, Nancy Astor, portrait of a pioneer, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980.Halperin, John, Eminent Georgians: the lives of King George V, Elizabeth Bowen, St. John Philby, and Nancy Astor, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.Harrison, Rosina., Rose: my life in service, New York: Viking Press, 1975. Masters, Anthony, Nancy Astor, a biography, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981.Sykes, Christopher, Nancy: the life of Lady Astor, Chicago, IL: Academy Chicago, 1984, 1972. |