Grace, the story of a princess

Grace, the story of a princess is a biography of Grace Kelly by Phyllida Hart-Davis, published by Collins in 1982. The Open Library record lists 141 pages, and the Google Books record gives the same count. Open Library files the book under five subjects: Biography; Motion picture actors and actresses; Princesses; Princes; and Grace, princess of Monaco, 1929-1982.

Two biographies of her came earlier: Marjorie P. K. Weiser’s Grace Kelly (1970) and Gwen Robyns’s Princess Grace (1976, W.H. Allen). Two more followed in 1984: Steven Englund’s Grace of Monaco (Doubleday) and Sarah Bradford’s Princess Grace (Panther). Robert Lacey’s Grace (1994, G.P. Putnam’s Sons) and Donald Spoto’s High society: the life of Grace Kelly (2009, Harmony Books) came later.

For fans

The date of publication

Wikipedia’s article on Grace Kelly gives her death as September 14, 1982, at age 52, from injuries sustained in a car crash. Open Library gives the book’s year alone, and Google Books prints the date as 1982-01-01. Neither record says whether the book reached readers before or after her death, so the order of the two events cannot be confirmed.

Beside the other books

The book is classed as a biography, the same class given to the books by Robyns, Englund and Bradford. Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess (1987, Dell), listed under James Spada and Grace Kelly, is classed as a memoir. The bibliography in Wikipedia’s article names Lacey, Wendy Leigh and Spoto among its biographers, and it does not name Hart-Davis. The Open Library record gives the publisher, the edition year, the page count and the subjects, and the Google Books record gives the title, the author, the date and the page count. Little is recorded about this book.