Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women: Elisabeth Marbury, Anne Morgan, Elsie de Wolfe, Anne Vanderbilt, and Their Times [Paperback]

Alfred Allan Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2001

Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women is a group biography of four talented-and wealthy-New York women at the turn of the twentieth century whose lives became intertwined as they pioneered new roles for women. With dash, wit, intelligence, and industry, Elisabeth Marbury, her partner Elsie de Wolfe, Anne Morgan (daughter of J. P. Morgan), and Anne Vanderbilt had the courage to use their privileged status to transform their world. From attending lively society balls and Europe's royal courts to marching in labor-organizing protests and nurturing great talents such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and Cole Porter, their activities open an illuminating window onto the worlds of art, culture, politics, science, and finance at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Born into New York City's Victorian aristocracy and destined for the constricted lives considered proper for genteel women, the ladies and not-so-gentle women of this book invented new, more fulfilling identities for themselves with all-American aplomb. Bessy Marbury (1856-1933) was a pioneering play agent who fostered the careers of such scandalous writers as Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. Her longtime companion, Elsie de Wolfe (1858-1950), virtually invented the field of interior decorating, making her name by refining the tastes of the rich. Anne Morgan (1873-1952), who began a passionate affair with Marbury in 1904, used her privileged position as J.P. Morgan's daughter to forcefully advocate the rights of working women; Morgan's close friend Anne Harriman Vanderbilt (1859-1940) surmounted such personal sorrows as the premature deaths of two husbands and a daughter's mental illness by devoting herself to charitable work on behalf of drug addicts, prisoners, and soldiers. Veteran nonfiction author Alfred Allan Lewis deftly juggles the interlocking stories of these remarkable women (and just about every famous name in New York society, the feminist movement, the theater, and American government at the time) in an atmospheric narrative studded with shrewd character sketches and colorful anecdotes. He creates an enjoyable group portrait of the four trailblazers, "neither rabble rousers nor conformists, [but] pragmatists who helped to adapt revolutionary principles in ways that made them palatable to the public." --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The subjects of this book have all but disappeared from common memory. Yet all four women led lives that were noteworthy and made contributions to fin-de-siecle American cultural life and WWI relief efforts that went beyond the ordinary. Elisabeth (Bessy) Marbury supported herself as a literary agent who represented many of the foremost playwrights of her day, including Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Clyde Fitch, and who produced musicals with the likes of the Shubert brothers. She inspired the two women with whom she was the most intimately involved to seek independent lives in ways that were hardly conventional at the beginning of this century. Anne Morgan, J.P. Morgan's daughter, became deeply committed to improving working conditions for women and then undertook relief work in France during the First World War, as did her later lover, Anne Vanderbilt. Bessy's long-time companion, Elsie deWolfe, was the first person to fashion interior decoration into a career and is still remembered for her innovative dispatch of Victorian fussiness. She too served devotedly in the relief effort in France. Lewis (Man of the World: A Biography of Herbert Bayard Swope) tells the story of the women's achievements, interconnections and associations within the worlds of fashion and celebrity in immense detail, punctuated by frequent negative comments on the foibles of his subjects and their wide circles of friends and acquaintances. Regrettably, this book so absorbed with surface and appearance has no accompanying illustrations. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (July 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140241736
• ISBN-13: 978-0140241730
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #296,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies > History

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully written and rollicking fun!, February 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Ladies and Not So Gentle Women (Hardcover)

If you love a good victorian novel or a fine James or Wharton work, you will love Lewis' book. He is a superior writer who has brought together an incredible amount of penetrating and enjoyable material about four amazing REAL women. The word that suits this book is ABUNDANCE. I ate it up. There are side stories, and gossipy inserts, historical facts and little known incidents brought to life. I loved it and brought the big babe to bed for many nights reading. What makes a book is the writer and if you add a good writer to great subjects and then times that by 4(!) you have Lewis. Don't let them slam you in the stacks babe -- you rock!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where was the editor?, August 25, 2001

By 

Patricia Holder (Mt Desert, ME United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women: Elisabeth Marbury, Anne Morgan, Elsie de Wolfe, Anne Vanderbilt, and Their Times (Paperback)

As a voracious reader of everything, but especially social history and even more of olde new york, I was so excited to discover this book. But, it is hard to plow through the verbiage, repetition, and confusion of this book. Each of these woman could have been the subject of her own book and Lewis has done little in the first three quarters to give us anything so we may understand connections that merit their lives being twined together in this fashion. Also, Lewis has tried hard to develop mystery and suspense where there doesn't need to be any - these ladies are great just the way they are, the endless foreshadowing, broad hinting and leaving a story just when it gets interesting is rather silly. The author has obviously done detailed research, but I found it confusing enough to have to jump back and forth between the narratives about the four subjects, but threw up my hands as chapter after chapter began with three pages on someone new who turned out to be the sister or next door neighbor of one of the subjects. Whew, I finally deconstructed the thing by reading each woman's story through by picking it out of the morass. What a shame, because these are interesting women.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Four Outstanding Women of the Gilded Age, January 7, 2002

By 

Moe811 (New York USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ladies and Not So Gentle Women (Hardcover)

Each of these women could easily have had their own biography, but the author does a pretty good job of covering all four, their relationships with their world and each other. This book is a bit disorganized, but once you sort out the characters, this is a wonderful view of four outstanding women and their world.