Women of Fortune: Money, Marriage, and Murder in Early Modern England (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781107034020)

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.

Author: Linda Levy Peck
ISBN-10: 1107034027
ISBN-13: 9781107034020
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/25/2018
Pages: 350
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.90lbs
Size: 10.00h x 7.50w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2019