Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and a Mother in the Gilded Age

Harper Perennial

$11.98 - $23.82
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UPC:
9780060938253
Maximum Purchase:
2 units
Binding:
Paperback
Publication Date:
1/9/2007
Release Date:
1/9/2007
Author:
Mackenzie Stuart, Amanda
Language:
English: Published; English: Original Language; English
Edition:
Reprint
Pages:
656
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A dual life story that reads as pleasurably as the best fiction but with all the intelligence of a first-rate biography. . . . completely absorbing.Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire The granddaughter of the richest man in America, Consuelo Vanderbilt was the prize catch of New York Society. But her socially ambitious mother, Alva, was adamant that her daughter should make a grand marriage, and the underfunded Duke of Marlborough was just the thingeven though Consuelo loved someone else. The story of these two women is not simply one of empty wealth, Gilded Age glamour, and of enterprising social ambition. Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt is also a fascinating account of how two women struggled to break free from the deeply materialistic, stifling world into which they were born, taking up the fight for female equality. In this brilliant and engrossing book, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart suggests that behind the most famous transatlantic marriage lies an extraordinary tale of the quest for female power.