Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution

America’s Founding Era reconsidered through the lives of two women as formidable as, and in some respects stronger than, the men they loved, married, and mothered.

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, 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. After his appointment as America’s first Treasury Secretary, she was challenged by the public and private controversies that followed her husband, 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.

About the Author

Amanda Vaill is the author of Hotel Florida; the bestselling Everybody Was So Young; and Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins. She is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter and her features and criticism have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Town and Country, and New York Magazine.