At the turn of the twentieth century, Amelie Rives was one of the most famous women in America. A member of Virginia's First Families-and granddaughter of a U.S. senator, she belonged to the southern aristocracy. Considered one of the great beauties of her time, Rives leveraged both her connections and her own considerable talent to become a best-selling author and then married into the wealthy Astor family. As Jane Turner Censer makes clear in this long overdue biography, Rives's personal story-filled with enormous triumphs and calamities-was, if anything, as fascinating as her art.Rives's most famous novel, The Quick or the Dead?, published when she was just twenty-four, was a sensation in its time, but soon she began to grapple with marital woes, an addiction to morphine and cocaine, and reams of unfavorable press coverage. Dramatically she took control of her celebrity: she divorced her husband and married a Russian prince, broke free of addiction, and changed her image to that of a European princess. Rives then regained her writing career, including plays produced on Broadway. Censer draws from Rives's early diaries, correspondence, and publications as well as the massive newspaper coverage she received during her lifetime to provide insights into the limits imposed on and actions taken by ambitious, elite young women in the late nineteenth-century South. As a trailblazer, Rives used her beauty, brains, and wayward behavior to make a splash in a manner later adopted by southern women as disparate as Zelda Fitzgerald and Tallulah Bankhead.
Jane Turner Censer is Professor Emerita of History at George Mason University and author of The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, 1865 1895.
The Princess of Albemarle is an elegant and engaging multifaceted portrait of Amelie Rives as a white southern aristocrat, author, celebrity, artist, socialite, drug addict, divorcee, and more. Censer offers a shrewd and persuasive assessment of Rives and her accomplishments that situates her notoriety in an era that is both strikingly similar and yet different from our own. And she does all of this with a sure but light touch. --W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory [A]n incisive scholarly biography of novelist and playwright Amelie Rives.... Censer does an admirable job piecing together Rives's life (including an extended stay in fin-de-siecle Paris) and sheds light on the rise of American celebrity culture. This solid account rescues a remarkable woman from obscurity. -- "Publishers Weekly" Jane Censer's engaging biography introduces modern readers to a fascinating Virginian--a best-selling author and international celebrity in her day who virtually disappeared from public memory following her death in 1945. Raised to fulfill society's expectations for a proper young lady, Rives enjoyed literary success that enabled her to chart an unconventional path in life. Her remarkable story reveals a talented and ambitious woman navigating the cultural constraints of her day while making the most of opportunities to challenge and expand society's views of women's appropriate place. --Sandra Gioia Treadway, Library of Virginia Well worth reading. Part of the University of Virginia Press's AmericanSouth Series, it contributes not only to the field of southern history, but also togender and literary studies of the era, with a thought-provoking biography of anoften-overlooked author, offering new insights on femininity and celebrity at the Finde Siecle. The life of Amelie Rives Chanler Troubetzkoy is undoubtedly one worthrediscovering. -- "Virginia Magazine"
