The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy

Journalist De Courcy (The Fishing Fleet) delivers a fascinating but surface-skimming history of the wealthy young American women—novelist Edith Wharton called them the “buccaneers”—who married titled Brits in the 19th century. De Courcy maintains that status-seeking mothers of nouveau riche families masterminded these transatlantic nuptials to break into the social circle of the wealthiest American families, an elite group known as the Knickerbockers. Arranging their daughters’ marriages to impoverished British aristocrats worked; the Knickerbockers, who respected titles, welcomed the brides, along with their families, into their ranks. The stories of women like Virginia Bonynge, Maud Burke, and Cornelia Bradley Martin are ones of wealth and power, not romance. (Jennie Jerome, one of the few exceptions, married for love.) De Courcy is best at describing upper-class life on both sides of the Atlantic, but the personalities of the young women never completely shine through. Instead of digging deep, De Courcy digresses with, for example, a profile of Tennessee Claflin (later Lady Cook), the scandalous clairvoyant turned feminist stockbroker and suffragette, who didn’t start out an heiress. Yet there’s enough glitz and glamour to enthrall those who couldn’t get enough of the recent royal nuptials. Photos. Agent: Isobel Dixon, Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. (Aug.)