Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy

Amélie Louise Rives Troubetzkoy (1863–1945) was an American novelist and poet. Rives wrote at least twenty-four volumes of fiction, numerous uncollected poems, and Herod and Marianne (1889), a verse drama. In 1888, she published novel The Quick or the Dead?, her most famous and popular work that sold 300,000 copies.[1] The work depicted erotic passions of a newly widowed woman and earned Rives notoriety. Later she turned to theater and began writing plays for Broadway. Her play The Fear Market ran for 118 performances at the Booth Theatre in 1916.[2]

A goddaughter of Robert E. Lee and a granddaughter of the engineer and senator William Cabell Rives, who had also been American ambassador to France, she was born in Richmond, Virginia and named after her aunt Amélie, a goddaughter of French Queen Marie-Amélie[3] . Amélie Rives married eccentric John Armstrong Chanler (an heir to the Astor family fortune) of New York.[4] The marriage was scandalous, but unhappy. The couple spent seven years as husband and wife, but most of the time lived apart.[1] Rives flirted with George Curzon,[4] her husband's younger brother, and began using drugs.[1] In 1896, just four months after their divorce, she married Pierre Troubetzkoy, an artist and aristocrat.[1] The couple resided at Castle Hill,[5] near Cismont, Virginia.

She was a close friend of novelist Julia Magruder, a frequent guest at Castle Hill[6], as well as prominent New York novelist Louis Auchincloss, who included a charming chaper on her in his memoir, A Writer's Capital.

Contents

Novels

References

  1. ^ a b c d Prose, Francine (July 30, 2006). "Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous". The Washington Post: p. BW15. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701113.html. 
  2. ^ "A Voice of Their Own: Women Playwrights". University of Virginia Library. http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/theatre/voice_women.html. Retrieved 2010-01-09. 
  3. ^ Louis Auchincloss: A Writer's Capital. New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1974
  4. ^ a b Maslin, Janet (July 3, 2006). "'Archie and Amélie': A Combustible Couple in a Torrid Descent Amid Opulence". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/books/03masl.html. Retrieved 2008-08-10. 
  5. ^ National Parks Service - Journey Through Hallowed Ground – Castle Hill
  6. ^ Virginia Encyclopedia

Bibliography

External links