Recensori in anteprimaWilliam Kuhn

Lord Byron is the greatest writer you've never read.

The biographer of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis tells the story of Britain's most glamorous and most tortured writer.

He was rich and handsome. He was a swimmer and a poet. He loved both sexes. In his work he made a queer love life both thrilling and universal.

He was born with a deformed right foot. An emotional hurt dating back to abuse when he was a boy also affected the man he became. But his hand moved on the page and his body in the water with ease and assurance. His is the story of transcending his disability and his childhood trauma in his verse.

Byron's biography may shine a spotlight on your story too. The disappointments he felt in love, as well as the personal transformation he achieved in his work will strike a chord with anyone who is a reader, a writer, or a lover.

What was it like to meet and talk to people who knew Jackie Kennedy Onassis well? Each of these eight people gave me a surprising look into what it was like to live and work in Jackie's world.

1 Nancy Tuckerman was Jackie's friend from boarding school and also her lifelong assistant.

2 Jackie was wary around Nan Talese, one of the most important people in publishing. Jackie was also envious of Nan.

3 Distantly related to her by marriage, Louis Auchincloss gave Jackie a hard time when she wanted to slip out of the spotlight.

4 Sarah Giles was an editor at Vanity Fair. She worked with Jackie in her apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue on a book that got them both into trouble.

5 Ruth Ansel knew Jackie via man about town and major photographer Peter Beard. When Jackie had a rare chance to acquire an authorized biography of Audrey Hepburn, Jackie confessed to Ruth why she couldn't do it.

6 Rosamond Bernier gave sold-out lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was married to The New York Times' art critic. Their wedding was at Philip Johnson's famous glass house in Connecticut. Nevertheless, Philip Johnson later proved treacherous both to Rosamond Bernier and to Jackie.

7 Francis Mason advised Jackie when she wanted to switch jobs. The story of how she ignored his advice and managed to remain friends with him is testimony to a high-spirited talent that the two of them shared.

8 Edith Welch and her husband went to India with Jackie. Jackie didn't always behave well on these trips, nor did Edith's husband.

These are three of Jackie's friends you've probably never heard of before. Yet, their anonymity speaks to a side of Jackie that wanted to escape stardom. She liked to warm herself near the talent of other women who'd distinguished themselves in ways she never quite could.

4 A Vanity Fair Insider. Fred Astaire and Jackie Onassis were both pinnacles of American elegance in the twentieth century. VF editor Sarah Giles produced a feature article on Fred Astaire that Jackie adored. Jackie wanted Giles's article made into a book. Complications ensued. Jackie's longstanding insistence on her own privacy was a little damaged in the tussle that followed.

5 An Iconic Art Director. One of the most famous professionals in the visual arts came to be friends with Jackie in the 1970s. They also considered doing a book together. Their proposed topic was Audrey Hepburn, but Jackie shied away at the last minute. Were Audrey and Jackie were a little too much alike? Is that why Jackie turned the idea down?

6 A Lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Double crossings. Dishonest dealing. Hurt feelings. These were some of the features of high life in Manhattan during the 1980s and 1990s. Jackie was one of the city's megawatt attractions. She had power, but the people who were the subjects of the books she wanted to edit sometimes had more.

These are three short nonfiction stories about what it was like to interview Jackie's friends. They all remembered her vividly. In telling me about themselves and their friendship with Jackie, they reveal more about the former First Lady than a catalog of her dresses or a collection of snapshots can convey.

These last two stories in the series are about Jackie's relationship with two rare people. One took me to his club, where Jackie and Brooke Astor were among the first female members. The other told me about accompanying Jackie to India, where together with her husband they travelled as a threesome.

7 - Jackie consulted Francis Mason when she wanted to change jobs after her unhappy time at Viking. He made an effort to take her to visit art publishers where he knew she'd be happy. Then she rejected his advice. Did he bear a grudge? The story of why he didn't is what makes him a fascinating man.

8 - Edith Welch gave me a behind-the-scenes account of traveling with Jackie on Indian adventures. She also wanted to talk to me about high-class prostitutes who may be admired but never possessed.

These are two short nonfiction accounts of interviews I did with longterm friends of Jackie's. I went away more impressed with these members of Jackie's circle than I'd expected. Each of them was skilled at weaving me into the conversation before I knew what was happening.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Nancy Tuckerman were friends over seven decades.

Nancy almost never talked to people writing books about Jackie. She made an exception for me because I was working with her former colleagues. She and I met for the first time at the Red Lion Inn on a cold day in February. She was wearing a plain brown sweater and hiding behind a newspaper. At first she was stiff with me. But at lunch the young waiter poured her a cold cup of coffee. When he stepped away, we both laughed. That was how we began a friendlier and franker conversation that lasted 10 years.

This is a revised and expanded version of my article, "Inside Jackie O's Longest, Most Complicated Friendship" in Vanity Fair, July 2019. Nancy's insights about Jackie are in every minute, but this is also the story of Nancy Tuckerman herself. As I'm telling the story, it's sometimes about me too.

For many people, Jackie was beyond criticism. People who came from her own background, however, were often more detached. They could be more forceful with her and sometimes more openly critical of her than others were.

Nan Talese was one of the most important people in American publishing at the end of the 20th century. Nan and Jackie both grew up as bookish debutantes in and around New York. When Nan and Jackie worked at the same publisher in the 1990s, a muted rivalry arose between them.

Louis Auchincloss was a novelist of Manhattan's elite. He was also a distant relation of Jackie's by marriage. They'd known each other since they were young. When he came to write books which Jackie edited, she discovered he could be more difficult than her other authors. He did what few others did. He told her the truth, though Auchincloss' honesty could also be malicious.

Photographs accentuate her style and flair, but it's Jackie's struggles with social equals that reveal the hidden, human dimensions of the world's most famous woman.

What would happen if the Queen of England were a little depressed and decided to leave the palace one day for a little adventure?

This is a look at the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis through the lens of the books she edited first at Viking and then at Doubleday. She was a private woman and defended her privacy in the courts. But she left a very public record of her tastes, her passions, her intellectual interests, and what made her laugh in the books she commissioned when she was an editor. She selected almost a hundred to edit in her 20-year career. Her editorial list is the private Jackie that was hidden all along in plain sight.