cover image Prairie Fever: British Aristocrats in the American West 1830–1890

Prairie Fever: British Aristocrats in the American West 1830–1890

Peter Pagnamenta. Norton, $27.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-393-07239-6

From the 1820s, stories like James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales enticed Britain’s nobility to America’s West. The first wave came to hunt bear and buffalo and helped document the demise of the wilderness they encountered. A second wave consisted of settlers in colonies that attempted to solve the problem of younger sons of noble families who had neither estates nor—because of political reforms in Britain—opportunities in the army or civil service. The final wave, seeking to profit from the cattle boom of the 1870s, provoked political backlash by acquiring huge ranches and using public lands for grazing. Pagnamenta (Sword and Blossom: A British Officer’s Enduring Love for a Japanese Woman) provides a lively account of British adventurers, weaving in sardonic reminders of the dark side of aristocratic wealth. One man’s Irish estates, for example, “had been a source of constant aggravation, ever since he evicted two hundred tenants to clear space for a new castle and park for himself.” British social history meets American manifest destiny in Pagnamenta’s successful recounting of “a long and improbable chapter” of the Victorian Age. 8 pages of b&w illus.; maps. Agent: (May)