Pride and pleasure : the Schuyler sisters in an age of revolution / Amanda Vaill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vaill, Amanda, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church, Angelica Schuyler, 1756-1815.

Church, Angelica Schuyler.

Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler, 1757-1854.

Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler.

Van Rensselaer, Margarita, 1758-1801.

Van Rensselaer, Margarita.

Schuyler family.

Sisters--United States--Biography.

Sisters.

United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783.

United States.

New York (State)--History--Revolution, 1775-1783.

New York (State).

New York (State)--Biography.

United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Women.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

x, 704 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates ; illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Schuyler sisters in an age of revolution

Place of Publication:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025.

Summary:

"The saga of the gifted Schuyler sisters, embroiled in turmoil, triumph, and tragedy at the very heart of our country's founding"-- Provided by publisher.

Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler, born to wealth and privilege in New York's Hudson Valley during the latter half of the eighteenth century, were raised to make good marriages and supervise substantial households. Instead they became embroiled in the turmoil of America's insurrection against Great Britain--and rebelled themselves, in ways as different as each was from the other, against the destiny mapped out for them. Glamorous Angelica, who sought fulfillment through attachments to powerful men, eloped at twenty with a war profiteer and led a luxurious life, first in Paris, then in London, charming Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the Prince of Wales. Eliza, one year her junior, too candid for flirtation and uninterested in influence or intrigue, married a penniless illegitimate outsider, Alexander Hamilton, and devoted herself to his career. But after his appointment as America's first Treasury Secretary, she was challenged by the controversies in which he became involved, not the least of which was the attraction that grew between him and her adored sister. When tragedy followed, everything changed for both women: one deprived of her animating spirit, the other improbably gaining a new, self-determined life. "You would not have suffered if you had married into a family less near the sun," wrote Angelica to Eliza, "but then [you would have missed] the pride, the pleasure, the nameless satisfactions." Drawing on deep archival research, including never-published records and letters, Amanda Vaill interweaves this family drama with its historical context, creating a narrative with the sweep and intimacy of a nineteenth-century novel. Full of battles and dinner parties, murky politics and transparent frocks, fierce loyalty and betrayals both public and personal, Pride and Pleasure brings two extraordinary American heroines to life.

Contents:

A note on method

Prologue

Part I: Pride

A careless, good-humored young man

Left to nature

The plantation and the pastures

Fine, sprightly, sensible girls

"We will serve our country"

So agreeable an acquaintance

A distressing situation

An unexpected blessing

A sort of insanity

A very serious thing

Part II: Pleasure

"So, we part"

Precarious happiness

"The way to get him"

Promises and resolutions

"A most excellent manager"

A path strewed with roses

Aquileia

Love and rivalship

Truly at sea

"It'll be fine"

The sharpest thorns

"The risk of my life"

The minister and the man

The approbation of the good and considerate

The needle and the hole

Near the sun

Strategies and tactics

The important change

Refuge in a garden

The unavoidable interview

Part III: Nameless satisfactions

"My hounded heart"

"The present state of our former coterie"

All my doubts and all my fears

The oratrix

"Our favorite subject

The little red hen

"The most interesting business of my protracted life."

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 607-675) and index.

ISBN:

9780374254377

0374254370

OCLC:

1528856030