Carol McD. Wallace

I bought this book back when it was first published; I was young and impressionable and soaked it up like a sponge. I recently picked this book up and read it again. I realized, from the perspective of 30 years later, how much this book influenced me.

I need to buy a new kilt for my daughter because she has now outgrown the one I bought her when she was 3 (what practical garments they are, no other item from her wardrobe at age 3 still fits her now at almost 7) and told her that she can't get show more her ears pierced until she is 16. I have done online searches of local training facilities that offer riding lessons in hopes that she will soon enter her horsey phase (which I have never outgrown and am really looking forward to shopping for a pony).

I own an old house (historic restoration is such a rewarding hobby) and have priced documented William Morris wallpapers and haunted the second hand furniture stores and auctions (for those items that look like they've been in the family forever). I garden. My job title is one the list of acceptable prep careers. Although my dogs were not specifically mentioned as an acceptable breed, they are rather rare, (meaning that none of the rednecks around here would ever own these dogs) esoteric and I have 3 of them, which counts as a pack.....always desirable. The car I drive is preppy and it is a preppy color.

So I have to wonder if this book had a subliminal effect that influenced me over the years,or if my own personal inclinations have always been like this and the book just clarified it? Either way I've got to say that this book might actually be a better, more reliable guide to living than the bible. show less

The history and dresses behind the Downton Abbey TV series.

I love the history and information in this book, and I loved the number of photos and images included, they really helped bring history and stories more to life and there were a LOT of them. The more the better...usually.

I was not a fan of the overall format and layout of the images and the side bubbles of stories. You would be on a roll reading an engaging story and then turn the page and instead of what you were reading you would show more have a page or two of photos and illustrations often not about what you were just reading. And then it would go back to your story. This made it very difficult at times to keep things straight and made the photos mean less because they were so annoying.

To fans of the period or the shows Downton Abbey, there is still a lot of value in this book, especially if you just want to have it to reference once in a while. I did learn new things and I really enjoyed seeing images of the dresses referred to in the text but I have no cohesive sense of what I read. If you are looking for a more serious history book or a more coherent story, I'd say skip it. show less

I find this book almost as useful as 1980s social history as I do an interesting post-mortem, as it were, of the WASP élite. Most social commentators have noted that the rise of the "bourgeois Bohemian", to use David Brooks' term, began its ascendancy in the early 1990s.

Thus, while much of the book is useless as a social guide, there's also the fact that the world it was written for no longer exists. It's rather a Götterdämmerung, so to speak. It's rare that a social class loses show more ascendancy in a single blow (Paris in 1789 excepted, of course) and thus, watching a way of life in its obvious twilight is extremely interesting, as the participants are always oblivious.

There is, of course, the argument that the way of life still exists, but it is my opinion that if it does, it has changed into something that the class celebrated in this book (which was a parody upon publication) ... well, they wouldn't recognise it, that's for certain. show less

This book, a cultural history of American heiress marrying English Lords, is just plain fun and fascinating. The Kindle version is currently on sale in the US, but To Marry an English Lord is so lavishly illustrated with photos and drawings on every page that I can’t imagine reading an ebook copy.

By the late 1800’s--early 1900’s there was a growing number of young ladies in the US who had lots of family money, but who couldn’t break into proper American “Society” because being show more nouveau riche they had no social status. At the same time across the Atlantic noble British families were having trouble paying for the upkeep and modernization of their estates--which is understandable since it wasn’t considered proper for the aristocracy to work--so marriage between the two groups made sense, but whoa! The culture shock! All of which is entertainingly recounted in this book.

After growing up in a fancy, almost palace-like mansion the American heiress often started married life in her British husband’s dark, deteriorating ancestral manor without indoor plumbing. The large (and very interesting) contrasts in attitudes about married life, gender roles, infidelity, money, servants, and politics further complicated her assimilation into her new life. There were a variety of ways to cope and the book delves into the personal stories of many of the women, including Jennie Jerome Churchill (mother of Winston) and Consuelo Vanderbilt.

To Marry an English Lord makes lively use of its rich historical material and is full of fruitful background information for further enjoying fiction and film. Edith Wharton and Henry James used the Victorian-Edwardian era tension between British and American customs in their novels and Julian Fellows, the creator of Downton Abbey, says this book inspired the Cora character in that series. show less