Heiresses : Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery - Signed Bookplate First Edition

by Kaufmann, Miranda | Astronomy, Space & Time
Published 04/09/2025 by One World Publications in the United Kingdom 
Hardback | 544 pages
234 x 153mm | 0g

Signed Bookplate First Edition - Hardback 

The sugar plantations of the Caribbean generated vast wealth not only for men, but women alsoThis money enabled heiresses to marry into the top tiers of the aristocracy, construct lavish country homes, commission the era’s greatest artists and influence the nation’s politics. Their banquets, dresses and dowries all funded by the exploitation of enslaved men, women and children. Following the lives of nine heiresses, Miranda Kaufmann peers beneath the demure, empire-waisted image of the Georgian heiress to reveal a murky world of inheritance, fortune-hunting and human exploitation.

From Jane Leigh Perrot, Jane Austen’s light-fingered aunt, to Elizabeth Vassall Fox, who faked her daughter’s death to maintain custody, Heiresses traces the often scandalous lives of the women who made Britain rich. Kaufmann also unearths the stories of the people the heiresses enslaved, whose labour funded their lifestyles with whom their fates were intimately intertwined.