Lily Price Hamersley became, with her 1888 marriage to the eighth Duke of Marlborough, the highest-ranking peeress in England and the first American duchess in fifty years.

The duke was one of three distinguished but, alas, short-lived husbands of this beauty from Troy, New York. Her fist husband, Louis Hamersley, was a patrician New Yorker who left Lily an affluent widow at the age of twenty-eight. Her second, the “wicked,” divorced, and socially outcast Duke of Marlborough, was brother-in-law to Jennie Churchill, uncle to Winston, and father-in-law to Consuelo Vanderbilt. Lily’s third husband was an ebullient Anglo-Irish lord, William de la Poer Beresford, a horseracing enthusiast whose popularity has been likened to that of modern film stars. In the course of a surprising life, Lily knew triumph and heartbreak while proving herself a woman of self-confidence, optimism, and remarkable resilience.

Even though her fortune went a long way towards stemming the decline of the Marlboroughs before Sunny, her step-son, married Consuelo Vanderbilt in 1895, Lily Price Hamersley is the forgotten Duchess of Marlborough. She is often treated as a footnote in biographies of her in-laws and step-relations, but despite her husband Blandford’s (the 8th Duke) neglect, and she her marriage to Lord William Beresford after Blandford’s death, she was a vital part of the Spencer-Churchill family and she formed a special attachment with a young Winston Churchill.

You can imagine my surprise and delight when Sally Svenson contacted me to share the news of her biography of the long-forgotten 8th Duchess of Marlborough (and dollar princess). I’m about a third of the way through the book, but so far, it exceeds my expectations and really digs deep into the life of this plucky New Yorker. It also comes with some pretty nifty endorsements:

“There is a unique flavor to Lily’s experience that had little equal in her era. Her three marriages, her confident ease in moving into impossibly complicated and exalted social realms, and her decades of dealing with legal complexities related to wills, estates, and trusts make her story read like a newly discovered Edith Wharton novel. The history of the fairytale years when Lily became the Duchess of Marlborough and a dear friend of Winston Churchill is immensely readable and fascinating.” — Eric Homberger, emeritus professor of American Studies, University of East Anglia, and author of Mrs. Astor’s New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age

“This entrancing portrait of a conventional American girl who made three extraordinary marriages draws on society papers and women’s magazines as well as archives, court records and private papers to create a lively and vivid picture of social elites on both sides of the Atlantic during the late nineteenth century.” — Sally Mitchell, author of Daily Life in Victorian England and The New Girl: Girls’ Culture in England, 1880-1915

“Fascinating! The 8th Duke of Marlborough has been generally dismissed in the past as being an unimportant figure in the Churchill family’s illustrious history, but . . . this book goes a long way in re-establishing his reputation, and reveals the importance of his marriage to Lily in the renewal of Blenheim Palace.” — Jeri Bapasola, archival researcher at Blenheim Palace

The book is available for purchase at Amazon.com, where you can also peek inside, and B&N.

FTC Disclaimer: The book was provided by the publisher for review. All opinions are my own.

It seems fitting that The World of Department Stores was released this month, for the Christmas season is both indelibly tied to the department store and created by it. In this book, Whitaker explores exactly how the department store came to be and how it ultimately created modern shopping habits, taking us from its roots in the 19th century until now.

Having read Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies’ Delight), Emile Zola’s romantic satire of the Parisian department store a few years ago, TWoDS placed the fears and anxieties of small shopkeepers into context. In a way, the department store of the 19th century was rather like Wal-Mart or Target–big box and discounted stores that sold everything and provided multiple services under one roof, to the detriment of individual stores without the volume of sales and income to discount their goods to as deep a degree. However, unlike department stores, Wal-Mart has never matched the opulence and luxury and just awe of visiting a six story marble or brick building crammed with haberdashery, exotic foodstuffs, mannequin parades, tea rooms, retiring rooms, etc etc!

The department store was also entwined with Jewish history, as many of the leading companies–including many we know today–were owned by Jewish immigrants, who built their wealth and influence on shopping. The dark side of this was the rampant antisemetism these magnates faced, particularly in 1930s Germany, when the Nazi’s infamous “Kristallnacht” destroyed Jewish-owned businesses or business owners, under pressure to deny any Jewish roots, “Aryanized” their stores. Another interesting facet explored in the book is the department store in Japan. The Japanese had their own traditional bazaars, and they pulled from this and from department stores in other parts of the world. Though Paris was the birthplace of the department store (and theirs were absolutely amazing), America refined it. Americans made everything larger than life, more commercial, more extravagant, and more necessary to the people they served. Gordon Selfridge, an American, took his experience with Marshall Field and advertising skills to Edwardian London, where he turned English shopping habits on its head with his department store, Selfridge’s.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what Whitaker explores in The World of Department Stores, and the book is lavishly illustrated with photographs of department stores past and present, ephemera, and behind-the-scenes of day-to-day operations. I greatly enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it to anyone who loves thick coffee table history books (and this would make a perfect Christmas present)!

View a few photos from the sumptuous interior here!

Visit Jan Whitaker on her website or Restaurant-ing through history, her amazing restaurant history blog.

Purchase from Amazon.com

Whenever I purchase or borrow a new book about the Edwardian period, the first thing I do is flip to the back to check the sources. Juliet Nicholson’s The Perfect Summer did not have a bibliography, but she did quote extensively from Eric Horne’s memoirs, What the Butler Winked At. However, this book was very hard to find, and when I did see it on Amazon or Abebooks, it was incredibly expensive. Fortunately, I discovered a reprint published by Westholme Publishing. Now What the Butler Winked At is not only back in print, but is very affordable!

Eric Horne served as a butler in some of the great English country manors from the 1860s until just after World War I, when many of the families whose heirs died in battle were forced to sell off their homes. Born in Southampton, Horne came from a humble family who valued education. Horne excelled in school and wished to go to sea, but lacking his parents’ permission, he instead ended up as a footboy for a local household. Over the years, Horne moved up in the service of the aristocracy: his goal was to become butler to the king of England, a position he very nearly secured. He did end up in the service of several distinguished households for many decades, and upon his retirement in 1922, he decided to write his memoir. Horne is a unique voice; not only did he have intimate contact with his employers and the household staff, he also possessed literary talent, so that his account provides authentic detail as well as shrewd—and often witty—views of the aristocracy, the servants, and their activities. Horne is not sentimental though; he does not think that he used his life wisely, having never learned a true trade. He reveals the plight of the servant class, where once a butler lost his employment—particularly following the devastation of World War I—he was likely to end up in a poorhouse, because employers did not usually provide pensions and servants were rarely able to save enough money to survive on their own. What the Butler Winked At is a fascinating and essential account of life in a country house during the height of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.