Amélie Louise Rives (1863–1945) novelist, poet, painter and playwright was born in Virginia, USA, the goddaughter of Civil War general Robert E. Lee. Her troubled and scandalous first marriage to a descendent of the Astor family took her to Europe where she met such literary luminaries as Oscar Wilde and Henry James. Her most famous novel was 'The Quick or the Dead', but many of her works were officially banned.

Four months after her divorce in 1896, Amélie remarried the Russian Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, an artist and an aristocrat, after Oscar Wilde introduced them in London.