- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Women of Fortune tells the compelling story of mercantile wealth, arranged marriages, and merchant heiresses who asserted their rights despite loss, imprisonment, and murder. Following three generations of the Bennet and Morewood families, who made their fortune in Crown finance, the East Indies, the Americas, and moneylending, Linda Levy Peck explores the changing society, economy, and culture of early modern England. The heiresses - curious, intrepid, entrepreneurial, scholarly - married into the aristocracy, fought for their property, and wrote philosophy. One spent years on the Grand Tour. Her life in Europe, despite the outbreak of war, is vividly documented. Another's husband went to debtors' prison. She recovered the fortune and bought shares. Husbands, sons, and contemporaries challenged their independence legally, financially, even violently, but new forms of wealth, education, and the law enabled these heiresses to insist on their own agency, create their own identities, and provide examples for later generations.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-title
- Title page
- Copyright information
- Dedication
- Contents
- Color Plates
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Family Trees
- Introduction: Prologue
- Part I Money
- Part II Marriage
- Part III Murder
- Part IV Metropolis
- Conclusion
- Appendix A Hatfield House Accounts 92/10 Computation of Mrs. Bennet’s Personal Estate
- Bibliography
- Index
- Color Plates