A deliciously told group biography of the young, rich, American Heiresses who Married Into the impoverished British Aristocracy at the turn of the 20th century--the real women who inspired Downton Abbey .y .
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 sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times.
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.
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.
The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain.
A delicious group biography of the young American Heiresses who Married Into the British Aristocracy at the turn of the twentieth century - the real women who inspired Downton Abbey.
A deliciously told group biography of the young, rich, American Heiresses who Married Into the impoverished British Aristocracy at the turn of the 20th century--the real women who inspired Downton Abbey .y
