The Husband Hunters: Social Climbing in London and New York

A sparkling social history of the 'Dollar Princesses', the young American heiresses who married into the English aristocracy. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known 'Dollar Princess', married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age. Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive first-hand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs and letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England - and what England thought of them.

Anne de Courcy's narrative places these marriages in the social and political currents of the era, exploring how the newcomers navigated old hierarchies while introducing new wealth and transatlantic culture into British high society. The book offers a vivid portrait of a transformative period when transatlantic alliances reshaped the upper classes and left a lasting imprint on the era’s manners, fashions and aspirations.

Pagina's: 336, Paperback, Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Kenmerken

• Tijdsperiode 1874 tot 1905
• Amerikaanse erfgenames in Britse aristocratie
• Rijkdom en glamour van de Gilded Age
• Gebaseerd op dagboeken, memoires en brieven
• Geschreven als groepbiografie door Anne de Courcy