"New York Times bestselling author Laura Thompson returns with Heiresses, a fascinating look at the lives of heiresses throughout history and the often tragic truth beneath the gilded surface . Heiresses: surely they are among the luckiest women on earth. Are they not to be envied, with their private jets and Chanel wardrobes and endless funds? Yet all too often those gilded lives have been beset with trauma and despair. Before the 20th century a...

"Tells the life of Amelie Rives, a talented, privileged young woman who was one of the most famous women in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. This account of Rives's substantial literary career and her personal saga provides insights into the limits imposed on and actions taken by ambitious, elite young women in the late nineteenth-century South. Censer contextualizes Rives's writings and actions within an American society and...