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To Marry an English Lord - a rec from 
wickedtrue - may be the most gossipy pop history book I've ever read. IT WAS DELIGHTFUL.
The book tracks the trend of Rich American Young Ladies marrying Impoverished Lords over the course of the Gilded Age, with lots of 'who wore what to whose wedding,' 'who used their money to build a cheesy fairy-tale castle in Scotland,' 'who slept with the Prince of Wales,' and 'who got dragged kicking and screaming to the altar and later got divorced in a huff.' It's basically like reading forty years' worth of society columns at all at once, with lots of bonus photos of incredibly extravagant Worth gowns. Here, have a few:
Mrs. Vanderbilt in costume as ELECTRICITY
Cleopatra IN A BUSTLE!
The book is fond of grand sweeping generalizations - American girls of this era were like this, did that, and wanted the other thing!; it would rather do lists than analysis, and is also resolutely determined not to discuss things like "colonialism" and "poverty" except as "things bored society ladies can do with their spare time." Basically, it is the lightest and fluffiest history book that could possibly be imagined. And sometimes this is exactly what you want! Or at least exactly what I want.
This also reminds me of one of the things that has delighted me most about Yuletide so far: there is fluffy fix-it fic for Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. I do not particularly care about reading fluffy fix-it fic for The Age of Innocence, but the fact that fluffy Edith Wharton fix-it fic was the dearest wish of someone's Yuletide heart, I don't know, I just find that really endearing!
(I am determined to get a proper Yuletide recs post at some point. But I'm still wading through the archive, and even being brutally ruthless with my priorities has still only gotten me through like two letters of the alphabet, so . . . it may be a while.)
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/312117.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.
wickedtrue - may be the most gossipy pop history book I've ever read. IT WAS DELIGHTFUL.
The book tracks the trend of Rich American Young Ladies marrying Impoverished Lords over the course of the Gilded Age, with lots of 'who wore what to whose wedding,' 'who used their money to build a cheesy fairy-tale castle in Scotland,' 'who slept with the Prince of Wales,' and 'who got dragged kicking and screaming to the altar and later got divorced in a huff.' It's basically like reading forty years' worth of society columns at all at once, with lots of bonus photos of incredibly extravagant Worth gowns. Here, have a few:
Mrs. Vanderbilt in costume as ELECTRICITY
Cleopatra IN A BUSTLE!
The book is fond of grand sweeping generalizations - American girls of this era were like this, did that, and wanted the other thing!; it would rather do lists than analysis, and is also resolutely determined not to discuss things like "colonialism" and "poverty" except as "things bored society ladies can do with their spare time." Basically, it is the lightest and fluffiest history book that could possibly be imagined. And sometimes this is exactly what you want! Or at least exactly what I want.
This also reminds me of one of the things that has delighted me most about Yuletide so far: there is fluffy fix-it fic for Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. I do not particularly care about reading fluffy fix-it fic for The Age of Innocence, but the fact that fluffy Edith Wharton fix-it fic was the dearest wish of someone's Yuletide heart, I don't know, I just find that really endearing!
(I am determined to get a proper Yuletide recs post at some point. But I'm still wading through the archive, and even being brutally ruthless with my priorities has still only gotten me through like two letters of the alphabet, so . . . it may be a while.)
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/312117.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.