The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy

<p><i>The Husband Hunters</i> is a deliciously told historical audiobook about the young, rich, American heiresses who married impoverished, British gentry at the turn of the twentieth century - The real women who inspired<i> Downton Abbey</i></p><p>Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, 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, fifty 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Praise for <i>The Husband Hunters:</i></p><p>&quot;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.&quot; -- Daisy Goodwin<i>, New York Times </i>bestselling author of <i>American Heiress</i></p>