My favourite podcast, The History Chicks, highly recommended this book when they did a series on the Gilded Age heiresses and I'm very glad I tracked down a copy. It is a fascinating book that goes into so many details of this time period and what life was like for the many American women who wed into the British aristocracy.

I was surprised to find it laid out more like a textbook than a traditional non-fiction book, but the approach works quite well. All over the place you get little articles about various things, from fashion to architecture to everything else in between.

This book is a great overview of the period and left me hungry for more, so I will no doubt be checking out more books about the people of this period, to read greater detail about them and their lives.

dnf @ 29%

Prospectus reads <3

Interesting, but not... thrilling. Fun to read something that inspired "Downton Abbey", and I can see a lot of the elements and how they were pulled in.

For those of you enamored with all things Crawley and Grantham, this book is a delight. Providing a history of the more than 100 women who married into the British aristocracy, the book endeavors to explain the who's, how's, and why's. Despite the extreme lightness and fluff of the material, I did actually learn a few things and was engaged for most of it. The book highlights Edward VII's role as the linchpin in this phenomena,starting with his US visit in the 1860, and dissects the waves of heiresses into groups - the Buccaneers, Self-Made Girls, and American Aristocrats. It also gave me a further appreciation of Wharton and James' heroines. Not only because so much of the back story comes from real life, but also because these heiresses had distinct outlooks and viewpoints depending on the time they crossed to Europe. Wharton's heiresses are so different from the blockbuster Consuelo Vanderbilt that shows up just a bit later.

If Edward ViI was the linchpin, then Mrs. Astor was the catalyst with her desire to control and dictate NY society. The book goes into great detail about Alva Vanderbilt's epic challenge of Mrs. Astor supremacy. How Jane Austen would have LOVED it! Long before Mrs. Vanderbilt took on Mrs. Astor, the newly minted American wealth found European and British society more open and accessible to their daughters. Once the process started, it became a serious pursuit for these girls (think planning a major Victorian military campaign) with wardrobes from Worth, introductions to the right people (some of our early heiresses even took money to make those introductions for subsequent heiresses - so much for noblesse oblige), followed closely (one hoped) with a marriage proposal when the fun of marriage negotiations could then commence.
Written in the late 80s the layout is such a throwback to the days of PageMaker. If you are feeling nostalgic for [b:The Silver Palate Cookbook|1107001|The Silver Palate Cookbook|Julee Rosso|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1181057251s/1107001.jpg|1093941] or [b:The Official Preppy Handbook|120254|The Official Preppy Handbook|Lisa Birnbach|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328074943s/120254.jpg|115790] then look no further than this book. I just laughed out loud when I saw how the pictures were embedded in the text and how there was never a page with just type.