In a Gilded Cage: From Heiress to Duchess

New York: St Martins Press, 1994. First Edition, First Printing. Fine Hardcover in a Fine Dust Jacket. New/New.

A popular song of the time called them "the dollar princesses." They were American heiresses who around the turn of the century married into European aristocracy.

In the tradition of Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, this is an intimate nonfiction look at the lives of celebrated American heiresses who married into British nobility.

No Flaws or Blemishes; Gift Quality.. Between 1870 and 1914, 100 American women married into British nobility, usually offering wealth in exchange for social status. In this lively and gossipy biography, Fowler (Below the Peacock Fan: First Ladies of the Raj) describes five marriages uniting British dukes and wealthy American women.

Consuelo Yznaga, for example, upon whom Edith Wharton based the character of Conchita Closson in The Buccaneers, endured the Eighth Duke of Manchester's philandering by becoming a society leader.

Lily Hammersley ignored the mistresses of her husband, the Eighth Duke of Marlborough.

However, Consuelo Vanderbilt, who was forced by her mother to mary the Ninth Duke of Marlborough, subsequently divorced him, became a feminist and wrote an autobiography, The Glitter and the Gold.

After Helena Zimmerman married the Ninth Duke of Manchester, he gambled away her fortune.

Only May Goelet's marriage to the Duke of Roxburghe was successful, according to Fowler, because they married for love.