A breezy, informative look at heiresses throughout history. As with all of Thompson's books, it is eminently readable.

I was delighted to have the opportunity to read Heiresses by Laura Thompson, expecting another rehash of American Dollar Princesses; stories I never tire of reading. Instead, what the reader is treated to is a study of the circumstances leading to and condition of being an heiress as Thompson expertly pulls the thread through obscure stories of English Heiresses from the 1600s through modern day. Thompson offers up the theory that the heiresses shared unhappiness, at times manic need for consumption, melancholy, lack of fulfillment is the result of them never having to dream and want for anything, and that makes a pay-off or feeling of satisfaction impossible to achieve. I found Thompson's writing to be superb and entertaining in the way she relates the stories to contemporaneous or modern-day events, giving the reader context.


Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this ARC and provide an honest review.

Thank you to Net Galley and St. Martin's Press for the chance to read and review this book. The opinions expressed are my own.
I usually like to read books written in this time period and based on this subject matter, but this one just seemed to drag. There were too many details about the time, and it seemed to get off of the topic. I liked the part about the Heiresses. I learned a lot about their interesting lives. It was good, but not great!

This was an unexpectedly interesting book. One tends to think that money call solve all ills and make everyone happy, but boy, that is definitely NOT the case here, as evidenced by dozens of matches between rich, yet often oppressed women, and poor, often unscrupulous men. Apparently men seeking rich women to marry, by one means or another, has been going on since the Middle Ages, and still happens to a certain extent. It gained much more notice over a 100 years ago, when rich American heiresses crossed the pond to marry titled yet impecunious aristocrats. Many of them married these men against their will, even if they were in love with another man, yet were pressured into these marriages. Some made the best of a rather bad deal, and othrs fought against it with equal fervor. And, these unequal marriages changed form again in the 20th century, with heiresses marrying multiple times during unhappy and unfulfilled lives, even dying broke! All in all, a fascinating look at why money does NOT bring happiness!

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this book re review; this did not influence my opinion at all.

This book was an interesting but at times tangled social history. Covering several generations worth of wealthy women, it offers one way to look at the times they lived in. It is interesting the ways in which wealth can protect you from difficulties and the ways in which it doesn't or worse actually throws trouble in your path. The women covered in the book navigated those obstacles with varying degrees of success.
At times, the biggest challenge in the book seemed to be keeping these women straight. They tended to live in fairly small social and family circles. The author does a good job of both telling their individual stories while comparing and contrasting their lives.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of this book. This review is my honest opinion.

Laura Thompson delivers a rich, intriguing and thought-provoking compendium on the lives of women who seem to have it all--but don't. Brimming with juicy details, the histories here are frequently tragic...but always fascinating. A clever idea, diligently researched and presented.

Extremely thorough and detailed! After reading the book description, I was intrigued but not sure what to expect. This book is packed with all kinds of juicy (and sometimes tragic) details of heiresses lives from centuries past. Not only were heiresses often sought after because of their fortune, but some were kidnapped, drugged, raped, or otherwise forced into marriage by men looking for wealth and willing to do anything to achieve it. Truly an eye-opening read about times (not-so) gone by.

Why do so many of the wealthiest women seem so unhappy? They have everything they could ever want at their finger tips, yet so many of them seem to be plagued by tragedy and unhappiness. This book delves into this, trying to answer why, and into what it means to be an heiress, what is expected from them.
Talking about heiresses in the gilded age, when women weren't allowed to own property, everything a women inherited became instantly the property of her husband. Some did manage to hold on to their inheritance and prosper, but so many others dutifully married as expected and lost theirs to their husbands. This book moves on to a time when American heiresses, trying to obtain the one thing money couldn't buy them, were marrying Lords and Dukes who had titles but no money to pay for the upkeep of their estates. By marrying into the aristocracy of Europe, the heiress obtained the much coveted title and the man got her wealth, thus saving his estate, which had probably been in his family hundreds of years.
The book makes a good point that maybe some of these women, who have had everything handed to them all their lives, get no real pleasure or enjoyment from these things because they come to easily. There is no sense of accomplishment like you would bet if you had to work and save to get some extravagant item you longed for.
In this book you will find stories of heiresses that are well known to the general public, such as /Consuelo Vanderbilt, Barbara Hutton and Patty Hearst, but you also read the stories of lesser known yet equally important heiresses.
This is a very fascinating look at the glittering world of some very fascinating women, eloquently written, portraying a portrait of the heiress in a light we do not normally see.
This book was wonderful and fascinating, these women rich beyond our dreams, often unhappy or not content, some do achieve greatness and fulfillment, which makes reading their stories even more intriguing, why is one happy and satisfied and the other not when they have such similar lives? This book made me think, that is how I tell a good book, if it makes me think.
Recommend highly. Thank you to St. Martin's Press and to Net Galley for the free ARC, I am leaving my honest review in return.

I'm sure there's a lot to like about the book but it was a constant rambling of disorganized fiction weaving into the nonfiction without a real trajectory. I tried to stick with it thinking that Thompson was providing a bit of a perspective and then it dragged on and then went on longer and I thought: when is she going to get to the story?

I wanted to like it but it was circuitous and unfocused. Clearly plenty of research, but it needed organization and an editor.

A book about to the manor born women. I was really interested in this nonfiction account of a collection of heiresses. Extremely enjoyable!

When I began this book I was expecting a juicy, backstairs look into the lives of these women. Unfortunately, nothing could be farther from the truth. The first third, almost half, of the book read more like a series of term papers on the history of women’s rights in Great Britain. It was a rather dry recital of names, amounts of inheritances with a very brief recounting of the horrible things that happened to the women. Things did picked up a bit when the Americans became involved. I think this book was more about women’s rights and the author chose the treatment of heiresses as the vehicle for its portrayal.


I found the writing to be dry and disconnected. The author would begin to write about one heiress and suddenly go off about another in the future and that one would remind her of another from the past and back we would go. Frankly, as soon as each heiress was mentioned, I found it easier to just Google her and learn her story so I would have a better idea of what the author was writing about.

My copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it.

This is a really fascinating look at women who are for the most part left out of history in favor of their fathers or husbands. I enjoyed learning more about them and not just the glamour of their lives, but also the difficulties, restrictions, and often trauma that accompanied enormous wealth. The picture that Thompson paints makes so clear that money certainly couldn't buy you everything if you were a woman, no matter how much of it you had. Lovers of history and biography will enjoy this book and its thoughtful depth.

Heiresses
The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies
by Laura Thompson


Oh, I did enjoy this book! I expected it to be the standard rehash of the Consuela Vanderbilt and the rest of the American “Dollar Princesses” from the Gilded Age, but this book is so much more. It begins with Mary Davies who inherited a large chunk of the Mayfair area of London. In 1677 she was sold on the fortune hunters marriage market at age 12 to the highest bidder. Unlike most fairy tales she did not live happily ever after, in fact few of the Heiresses in this book had fairy tale endings. The continues through the Heiresses of history till the present-day including Barbara Hutton, Christina Onassis and Patty Hearst.

Woven into the chapters is a history of women’s property rights, social history, Jane Austen, comments by The Mitford sisters, Chips Cannon, and host of other noteworthy literary and historical figures. There is even a nod to Downton Abby!

I do think one needs to have some prior knowledge of English history and literature to properly appreciate this book – it abounds with names and quotes and historical events. I caught most of the references but some had me consulting The Duke of Google.

After finishing this book, it was very apparent that money does not buy happiness. So many wasted lives and so much squandered money. Many of the heiresses were with much money but little else- mothers who either died or ignored them, absent fathers, and a life of no purpose. In fact, it’s the latter that is downfall of most of the heiresses. It seems that most of us, who wake up every morning with a job to do or tasks to compete. Waking up each day with nothing to do but spend money on clothes, jewels or society parties is not conducive to a life well lived.

The Heiresses is a perfect read for fans of Downton Abby, The Gilded Age and British social history. Many thanks to NetGalley for an Advanced Reading Copy in return for this honest review.

I thank St. Martin's Press and netgalley for providing me ARc of this book in exchange for an honest review. This book will be published on 1st February,2022.

The author starts well by introducing women from fiction, like those from Pride and Prejudice and slowly blends in the laws of the 19th century about the women's rights in fortune.
While majority women have to think about earning money for livelihood, would get a sense of pride when they purchased a luxury item, sense of longing for such riches isn't a part of the heiresses' life. Then what is it that they did to pass days? The book gives a glimpse into the lives of heiresses of the past few centuries by devoting a chapter or two on each.
The chapters are well organized and move ahead as the centuries progress. The marriage between American Heiresses to the British aristocracy, and the love of the paparazzi towards them from both the sides of the ocean is explained in detail. There are many heiresses and powerful women mentioned from the Gilded age, as well as the nouveau riche and old money.

The author has spanned past several centuries to describe the lives of the heiresses whose wealth is beyond imagination, some of whom lost all or some of it, while others remained powerful despite laws not giving them any power over their inheritance. The writing flows smoothly and that is what kept my interest. Besides the lives of the uber rich, there are several things I got to read in this
book - laws of the past centuries, culture etc. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in not only knowing the lives of rich, but also the culture and society of those times.

I admit, I love history. This book might not be for the casual reader, but it is phenomenally researched, and written using well chosen words. It explores more than the surface of the experiences of heiresses. In fact, some of my prior assumptions have been blasted. I highly recommend the book to anyone into history, and especially in women's history. Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

I was not able to push myself to finish this book. I really struggled to follow it: many and many names coming up of nowhere and it was impossible for me to follow them. Arrived around 28% I gave up: I was not find any interesting plot, except that heiresses are not really human beings but just properties to be exchanged to gain power/money/titles.

I thoroughly enjoyed this well researched book. I did find the beginning a little dry and hard to get into, but once it started to delve into the lives of the different women discussed I couldn’t get enough. I found fascinating the idea of having so much money but not being seen as equal or having as much power as a male counterpart. Overall, I’m a sucker for anything resembling Downton or with hints of the Gilded Age and this book delivered on that. The research put in by the author and the structure employed made sure it was a fascinating, thought-provoking read.

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle by St. Martin’s Press and #NetGalley for my honest opinion. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Enjoyable work of nonfiction regarding inherited wealth and heiresses.

Heiresses by Laura Thompson is a fascinating look at some of the most interesting women throughout history. For the most part, it reads like a novel. And through each woman's tale, the author skillfully weaves in the historical and political background of that particular time so that we don't just have a multi-character biography but an intimate and archival glimpse into history through the too often overlooked female POV. Highly recommend!

A very interesting insight of the women heiresses of families that were famous. Lots of information that was written in lengthy detail which was all very interesting. The beginning was a little hard to get into but the rest of the book flowed beautifully.