An engaging book about heiresses, women who have always been in classes of their own. Thompson, who has penned biographies of Agatha Christie and the Mitford sisters, knows how to construct fascinating narratives out of dry research. Working from historical records, newspaper articles, and personal correspondence, the author creates a series of sketches that highlight recurring themes but also offer great variety. In Georgian England, heiresses were family assets to be traded, with their own views worth very little. This was also the case in the U.S. in the 19th century, although it had more to do with the building of business empires. It was only at the start of the 20th century that heiresses were able to exert control over their lives. Thompson has a good time with tales of American heiresses going to Europe to marry men with impressive titles but small bank accounts. Leading the way was Jennie Jerome, who married Lord Randolph Churchill and gave birth to Winston. Several heiresses, like Peggy Guggenheim, became memorable patrons of the arts. Others gave themselves over to eccentricity, spending ridiculous sums on parties, social climbing, pets, or other hobbies. Alice Silverthorne, a Chicago socialite who was married to a timber tycoon, raised a lion club called Samson. Some heiresses reveled in their unearned wealth, and some were plagued by guilt over it. Quite a few drank themselves to death. Nancy Cunard, "a precursor of the Mitford sisters by a generation," found another sort of addiction, becoming a hardcore socialist. Nearly all of the heiresses in the book had disastrous marriages or relationships. Barbara Woolworth Hutton made a tabloid career out of picking unsuitable men, marrying seven times. A gilded cage creates a streak of self-destruction, notes Thompson. Nevertheless, she reveals her subjects as real people with measures of tragedy, resilience, and vigor. A book that offers insight as well as entertainment--a peek into the human condition from an unexpected angle. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Why does the term heiress pique such romantic and social interest? In this detailed history, prolific author Thompson (Life in a Cold Climate, 2019) goes back over 400 years to consider the fates of numerous British and American women who came into family money. Taken together, these profiles (especially those examples dating before the English Parliament's Married Women's Property Protection Act of 1882) tell woeful tales of money-hungry relatives, misogynistic laws and social constraints, abduction, rape, abandonment, relentless childbearing, conspiring heirs, and unsympathetic, victim-blaming courts. Thompson concentrates on three types of heiresses: waifs from previous centuries at the mercy of nefarious schemers, late nineteenth-- and early twentieth--century American socialites in search of aristocratic titles, and more contemporary celebrities, whose lives, sadly, still often reflect lurid overindulgence and blatant exploitation. Thompson also considers the exceptions, women who managed to maintain personal sovereignty and exert control over their own lives and finances. Pages are filled with well-documented accounts of horrid mistreatment, legal wrangling, unimaginable spending, lavish lifestyles, and general depravity. In short, authoritative, eye-opening, and gloriously gossipy.

Biographer Thompson (Six Girls) unearths secrets and scandals in this entertaining group portrait of women, mainly British and American and from the 19th and 20th centuries, who inherited vast wealth. Claiming that "it really is different for girls," Thompson notes that until the late 19th century in England, a wife's identity was "legally subsumed into that of her husband," and he was entitled to her property and income. Later, when a woman's money was "legally and incontestably" her own, many heiresses were still intensely vulnerable and led "godawful lives," while others saw their wealth "as a responsibility worth having." Thompson recounts the stories of Mary Davies, who lost control of her London estate after her husband's death in 1700; Winnaretta Singer, daughter of sewing machine manufacturer Isaac Singer, who "inhabit the iconoclastic milieu of the avant garde" in late 19th-century Paris; and baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts, who partnered with Charles Dickens to rehabilitate impoverished schools and neighborhoods in Victorian England. Other profile subjects include kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, and Winnaretta Singer's niece Daisy Fellowes, who "lived as a pure and unrepentant hedonist." Skillfully evoking disparate social milieus and generational divides, Thompson packs the narrative full of juicy gossip without resorting to caricature. Readers will be enthralled. Agent: Georgina Capel, Georgina Capel Assoc. (Feb.)