America has no royal family, but in the earliest 1960s, the White House was graced with the presence of a couple so attractive, so vibrant and so glamorous that the eminent historian Theodore H. White, writing in LIFE, likened the situation to Camelot.

And if Jack Kennedy was our King Arthur, then Jackie was our queen.

On these pages, that era comes alive again, as do the earlier and later chapters of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis's remarkable, captivating story. LIFE long enjoyed a special relationship with this woman--she first appeared on the magazine's cover in 1953 as the fiancee of a charismatic young senator from Massachesetts, beginning a streak that would stretch to 18 covers in all--and this book is filled with warm, intimate images from our archives. We watch her children grow in these pages, and we smile. We revisit the tragedies that she endured, and we sympathize anew.

Jackie's was an altogether amazing American life. LIFE was there to chronicle it at the time and is there to recapture it in this special commemorative book. In this volume, Jackie lives on.