Amazon.com
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.
See all Editorial Reviews
(2)
$17.16
(5)
$40.95
(14)
