Bio

Betsy Prioleau (PREE-oh-low) is an author and cultural historian. She received her PhD in American Literature at Duke University, then taught English and world literature at Manhattan College where she was a tenured associate professor. She was a scholar in residence at New York University and taught cultural history at the New York University Liberal Studies Program. Besides essays and scholarly articles, she is the author of four books: Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love; Swoon: Great Seducers and Why Women Love Them; Circle of Eros: Sexuality in the Work of William Dean Howells; and most recently, Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Wall Street Journal Noteworthy Book. She lives in New York City with her husband, Philip.