Princess Grace

Princess Grace is a biography of Grace Kelly by Sarah Bradford, published by Panther. The publisher’s description, as Google Books carries it, says the book rests on privileged access to Prince Rainier and to others close to the royal circle. The same description says the account runs from Kelly’s Philadelphia childhood to her royal life in Monte Carlo.

On that description, the book suits a reader who wants Kelly’s life told by a writer given access to her husband. It shares its title with Gwen Robyns’s Princess Grace (1976, W.H. Allen), a separate biography, so the author’s name is the way to tell the two apart.

For fans

What the library records say

Google Books dates the book 1984 and gives it 492 pages. The Open Library record lists a Panther edition published in 1985 and files the work under two subjects, Biography and Princesses. The publisher’s description calls Kelly a “famous actress-turned-princess” and names Rainier as the one person the access included. Wikipedia’s entry on Grace Kelly records that she married Rainier on April 18, 1956, and remained his wife until she died in 1982.

Next to the other biographies

Biographies of Kelly with earlier dates include Marjorie P. K. Weiser’s Grace Kelly (1970), Robyns’s Princess Grace (1976) and Phyllida Hart-Davis’s Grace, the story of a princess (1982, Collins). Steven Englund’s Grace of Monaco (1984, Doubleday) carries the same year as Bradford’s book. Later biographies include Jeffrey Robinson’s Rainier & Grace (1989, Atlantic Monthly Press), Robert Lacey’s Grace (1994, G.P. Putnam’s Sons), Wendy Leigh’s True Grace (2007, JR Books Limited) and Donald Spoto’s High Society (2009, Harmony Books).

Howell Conant’s Grace (1992, Random House) is a different kind of book, which Wikipedia describes as a collection of his photographs from her years as Princess of Monaco. The bibliography in Wikipedia’s entry on Kelly lists Lacey, Leigh and Spoto and does not list Bradford.