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The Husband Hunters
- American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Husband Hunters is a deliciously told historical audiobook about the young, rich, American heiresses who married impoverished, British gentry at the turn of the 20th century - the real women who inspired Downton Abbey
Towards the end of the 19th century and for the first few years of the 20th, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege, and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, 50 years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. 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.
Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. 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.
"Witty and well researched, Anne de Courcy brings to colorful, dramatic life these dollar princesses whose vast fortunes propelled them to glittering trans-Atlantic marriages that captivated international society." (Daisy Goodwin, New York Times best-selling author of American Heiress)
Critic reviews
“Downton Abbey fans will swoon over this trip through the privileged turn-of-the-century world of cash, class, and coronets." (Kirkus)
"[Narrator Clare Corbett's] lively performance and clear diction help listeners understand the complicated social rules underlying the splendor of the world's richest as they vied for the perfect spouse." (AudioFile Magazine)
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Story
How did the Wendels, one of New York’s most famous Gilded Age families, disappear from history? The Wendels built a fortune from New York real estate, and rubbed shoulders with the Astors, Vanderbilts, and Stuyvesants. But as the 19th century came to an end, the Wendel family tore itself apart. Following six years of painstaking archival research, Claire Prentice has prised open the door of the Wendels’ Fifth Avenue mansion—dubbed “the house of mystery” by the press—to reveal a fascinating and dysfunctional family imprisoned in a gilded cage.
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Kept Waiting for it to be Interesting
- By Mary on 06-23-23
By: Claire Prentice
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Empty Mansions
- The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
- By: Bill Dedman, Paul Clark Newell Jr.
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly 60 years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the 19th century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades.
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Fascinating, But Know This...
- By Karen K on 04-08-15
By: Bill Dedman, and others
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The Gilded Age
- A Captivating Guide to an Era in American History That Overlaps the Reconstruction Era and Coincides with Parts of the Victorian Era in Britain Along with the Belle Époque in France
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Jason Zenobia
- Length: 4 hrs
- Unabridged
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From a modern perspective, it may seem that the United States was a major powerhouse since its early days. However, the truth is far from it. This transformation from a weak and relatively poor dominion into a world-class international power was undoubtedly a long process, yet it achieved its peak in the late 19th century. At that time, the US managed to achieve change in many aspects, from economic and social to political and military. This period of growth has become known as the Gilded Age.
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Excellent concise history
- By Mark on 06-21-22
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The Phantom of Fifth Avenue
- The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark
- By: Meryl Gordon
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family's 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. Her father, William Andrews Clark, was the second richest man in America. Huguette attended the coronation of King George V. And at 22, with a personal fortune of $50 million, she married a Princeton man and childhood friend. Two-years later the couple divorced. After a series of failed romances, Huguette began to withdraw from society. What happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse?
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The OTHER Huguette Clark Book
- By Teadrinker on 03-24-15
By: Meryl Gordon
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The Woman Before Wallis
- A Novel of Windsors, Vanderbilts, and Royal Scandal
- By: Bryn Turnbull
- Narrated by: Mary Jane Wells
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1925, Thelma Morgan arrives at the Paris Ritz still stinging from the heartache and humiliation of her failed marriage. Her twin sister, Gloria, newly and blissfully wedded to Reginald Vanderbilt and with a baby in tow, has invited her to spend the summer - and though romance is the last thing on Thelma’s mind, she can’t deny that Reggie’s friend Duke Furness is as charming and dapper as he is keen to win her affection.
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Beautifully Written
- By Amazon Customer on 11-29-20
By: Bryn Turnbull
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An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew
- By: Annejet van der Zijl, Michele Hutchison - translator
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Born to a pioneering family in Upstate New York in the late 1800s, Allene Tew was beautiful, impetuous, and frustrated by the confines of her small hometown. At eighteen, she met Tod Hostetter at a local dance, having no idea that the mercurial charmer she would impulsively wed was heir to one of the wealthiest families in America. But when he died twelve years later, Allene packed her bags for New York City. Never once did she look back.
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American princess
- By ZOE R on 05-12-18
By: Annejet van der Zijl, and others
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The Richest Woman in America
- Hetty Green in the Gilded Age
- By: Janet Wallach
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green. At the time of her death in 1916, she was worth at least 100 million dollars, equal to more than 2 billion dollars today. A strong believer in women being financially independent, she offered valuable lessons for the present times. Abandoned at birth by her neurotic mother, scorned by her misogynist father, Hetty set out as a child to prove her value. Following the simple rules of her wealthy Quaker father, she successfully invested her money and along the way proved to herself that she was wealthy and therefore worthy.
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Horrible Narrator
- By Christina M. Kruse on 06-10-15
By: Janet Wallach
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1939
- The Last Season
- By: Anne deCourcy
- Narrated by: Maggie Ollerenshaw
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The season of 1939 brought all those "in Society" to London. The young debutante daughters of the upper classes were presented to the king and queen to mark their acceptance into the new adult world of their parents. They sparkled their way through a succession of balls and parties and sporting events. The season brought together influential people not only from society but also from government at the various events of the social calendar.
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Costume, Movement and Manners...
- By Elisa R. Goodman on 04-19-22
By: Anne deCourcy
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Diamonds and Deadlines
- A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age
- By: Betsy Prioleau
- Narrated by: Beth Hicks
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Among the fabled tycoons of the Gilded Age—Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt—is a forgotten figure: Mrs. Frank Leslie. For twenty years she ran the country’s largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Publishing, which chronicled postbellum America in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity and tastemaker in the process. Diamonds and Deadlines reveals the unknown, sensational life of the brilliant and brazen “empress of journalism”.
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Wonderful biography of forgotten gilded age publishing icon
- By Amazon Customer on 03-24-24
By: Betsy Prioleau
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The Riviera Set
- Glitz, Glamour, and the Hidden World of High Society
- By: Mary S. Lovell
- Narrated by: Jill Rolls
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The Riviera Set reveals the story of the group of people who lived, partied, bed-hopped, and politicked at the Château de l'Horizon near Cannes, over the course of 40 years from the time when Coco Chanel made southern French tans fashionable in the twenties to the death of the playboy Prince Aly Khan in 1960. At the heart of dynamic group was the amazing Maxine Elliott, the daughter of a fisherman from Connecticut, who built the beautiful art deco Château.
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Riviera Set
- By Lois Kelly on 05-04-18
By: Mary S. Lovell
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A Well-Behaved Woman
- A Novel of the Vanderbilts
- By: Therese Anne Fowler
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Alva Smith, her Southern family destitute after the Civil War, married into one of America’s great Gilded Age dynasties: the newly wealthy but socially shunned Vanderbilts. Alva defied convention for women of her time, asserting power within her marriage and becoming a leader in the women's suffrage movement. In A Well-Behaved Woman, Therese Anne Fowler paints a glittering world of enormous wealth contrasted against desperate poverty, of social ambition and social scorn, of friendship and betrayal, and an unforgettable story of a remarkable woman.
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Don’t get me wrong...
- By carmen on 03-09-19
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What listeners say about The Husband Hunters
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rhonda417
- 11-29-18
Too busy
Struggled to stay up with the many names all going at once. Highlights, no story.
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8 people found this helpful
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- ckwrites
- 10-29-23
Could Have Been An Article
There was a lot of redundancy and filler here in what would have been a really interesting think piece.
Meanwhile, the one story that could have been an entire book - that of Tennessee Clafin and her sister - was kinda buried amidst all the other stories.
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1 person found this helpful
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- DebWHNP
- 05-15-19
cash for coronets
By to today's standards of good taste and courtesy, the Guilded Age is appalling. so glad times have changed.
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- BookWorm620
- 12-15-18
New and Old Stories delightfully told
I'm a bit obsessed with real life stories of the Gilded Age Heiresses. So I was afraid to get this book afraid it was just going to be rehash, but while some of the stories will be very familiar to anyone in love with this era (such as Consuelo Vanderbilt and Jennie Jerome) there were plenty of new details and perspectives I had never heard before and they were all woven together in a delightful way. The narrator is excellent and does the America quotes very well.
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1 person found this helpful
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- MiMi
- 05-22-22
Learning and gossip combine…
…for a fascinating and titillating look inside Gilded Age America and the British aristocracy! Thoroughly enjoyable.
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- Sue A Eakin
- 01-09-23
Marriage for money
It was interesting, but sad to know how many American girls went to England to find husbands and would receive proposals, depending on how much money came with the bride. Sad to learn how title hungry the upper class was in this time
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- Kindle Customer
- 02-20-24
Details
Interesting details, many not shared in other references, of already known histories. Not biased, but based on historical record.
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- Cathy Bailey
- 12-08-20
Good Read
It was a fun and light read in this trying time. Times certainly have changed.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dee Statham
- 11-06-18
Excellent
Not only interesting, but a wonderful history lesson. So much money left America with these marriages that often failed. British aristocracy can thank American heiresses for rescuing many of the beautiful mansions that were failing. If I had,listened to this book prior to watching Downton Abbey, I would have had a better appreciation for the series which was already terrific.
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- Makenzie Payne
- 03-22-19
History junkie jack pot!
This was an amazing interpretation of gilded age society. The author did an amazing job and so did the narrator in depicting and explaining what it was like for the husband hunters in this time period!
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