Amélie Rives

Amélie Louise Rives Troubetzkoy (1863–1945) was an American poet and novelist. 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. The work depicted erotic passions of a newly widowed woman and earned Rives notoriety. Her 1914 novel, World's End was reputed to be "the best seller in New York city". 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.

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. Amélie Rives married eccentric John Armstrong "Archie" Chanler (an heir to the Astor family fortune) of New York. The marriage was scandalous, but unhappy. The couple spent seven years as husband and wife, but most of the time lived apart. Rives flirted with George Curzon, her husband's younger brother, and began using drugs. In 1896, just four months after their divorce, she married Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, an artist and aristocrat after Oscar Wilde introduced them in London. The couple resided at Castle Hill, near Cismont, Virginia.

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

Troubetzkoy's papers reside at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

Novels

 * A Brother to Dragons and Other Old-time Tales (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1888)
 * Virginia of Virginia (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1888)
 * Herod and Mariamne (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1888)
 * The Quick or the Dead? A Study (J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1888)
 * Witness of the Sun (J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1889)
 * According to St. John (John W. Lovell Co., New York, 1891)
 * Barbara Dering: A Sequel to The Quick or the Dead? (J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1893)
 * Tanis the Sang-Digger (Town Topics Publishing Co. New York, 1893)
 * Athelwold (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1893)
 * Meriel (Chatto & Windas, London, 1898)
 * Augustine the Man (John Lane Company, New York, 1906)
 * Seléné (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1905)
 * A Damsel Errant (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1908)
 * The Golden Rose: The Romance of A Strange Soul (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1908)
 * Trix and Over-the-Moon (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1909)
 * Pan's Mountain (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1910)
 * Hidden House (J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1912)
 * World's End (Frederick A. Stokes & Co., New York, 1914)
 * Shadows of Flames (Hurst & Blackett, Ltd., London, 1915)
 * The Elusive Lady (Hurst & Blackett, Ltd., London)
 * The Ghost Garden (S. B. Gundy, Toronto, 1918)
 * As The Wind Blew (Frederick A. Stokes & Co., New York, 1920)
 * The Sea-Womans Cloak and November Eve (Stewart Kidd Co., Cincinnati, 1923)
 * The Queerness of Celia (Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1926)
 * Firedamp (Frederick A. Stokes & Co., New York, 1930)