Meet the heiresses.
Their dresses are the latest fashion, their rooms Mayfair's most luxurious, their suitors Britain's most powerful men.
Their fortunes – blood and sugar.
'A sobering and significant achievement, this is a book you need to read.' Lucy Worsley
Georgian heiresses are inescapable in British culture. They flutter through Jane Austen’s novels and countless period dramas. Their portraits – painted by Gainsborough, Zoffany, Reynolds – crowd our museums while their lavish estates pepper the countryside. However, a less genteel story lurks beneath the veneer – those glorious balls, dresses and dowries were funded by the exploitation of enslaved men, women and children.
Following the lives of nine heiresses and tracing their tainted money from its origins in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, Miranda Kaufmann reveals 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 during a tumultuous divorce, Heiresses traces the often scandalous lives of the women who helped build Britain’s empire.
Kaufmann also pieces together the lives of the people these heiresses and their families enslaved. There’s Betsy
Newton, who escaped from Barbados to London to confront her enslavers face-to-face. Meanwhile in Jamaica, Susanna Augier became a powerful landowner, inheriting her white father’s properties. Her daughter, an eligible heiress, would marry into the British aristocracy.
Enlightening, provocative and masterfully researched, Heiresses offers a vital history of enslavement in Britain and the Caribbean.
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'A startling insight into the lives of the real “Mrs Rochesters”. The role of women in plantation slavery, as perpetrators and victims is uncovered by a historian at the height of her powers.' Anita Anand, author of The Patient Assassin and co-host of Empire
'A perfect balance of critical humour and searing historical insight. A must-read.' Paterson Joseph, actor and author of The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho
'Vivid, shocking and compulsively readable... Miranda Kaufmann is not just a fine investigative historian – she is a superb story-teller.' Alex Renton, author of Blood Legacy
About the Author :
Miranda Kaufmann is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of London’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Her first book, Black Tudors, was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 and a Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer. She has appeared on Sky News, the BBC and Al Jazeera, and written for The Times, Guardian and BBC History Magazine. She lives in North Wales.
Review :
'A sobering and significant achievement, this is a book you need to read.' —Lucy Worsley
'Heiresses captures the many intimate stories behind the money laundering of enslavers' wealth. Kaufmann's writing style is neither judgy nor cold but a perfect balance of critical humour and searing historical insight. A must-read.' —Paterson Joseph, actor and author of The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho
'A startling insight into the lives of the real “Mrs Rochesters”. The role of women in plantation slavery, as perpetrators and victims is uncovered by a historian at the height of her powers.' —Anita Anand, author of The Patient Assassin and co-host of Empire
'An impeccably researched and penetrating new history of the transatlantic slavery system, revealing the role of heiresses in bringing slavery wealth to British society. Forensic, rigorous and deeply ethical, the book is written in flawless prose. Kaufmann's revelatory chapter on Jane Austen alone entirely redefines a favoured author's relationship with slavery and abolition.' —Corinne Fowler, author of Our Island Stories
'Kaufmann maps the global journeys these women undertook... Kaufmann pays close attention to the business acumen that they and their families brought to enterprises like sugar plantations and the transatlantic slave trade. Such a lens shows that the mobility of these women depended on the labor of those who were unfree.' —The New Yorker
'These nine women’s stories are remarkably new: apart from two old books and a few articles, none has been the subject of study before....Even for younger generations better informed about the consequences of Empire, this book will be revelatory....This book, in effect, takes imagined statues of elite female slavers from their plinths and, instead of merely attacking them, puts them on display, where the captions and adjacent displays can provide a more complete context. It is a heroic achievement.' —Times Literary Supplement
'Vivid, shocking and compulsively readable: these stories of greed, lust and betrayal, all driven by a ruling elite that was racist and misogynist to its core, are so important as we seek an honest reckoning with Britain's colonial history. Miranda Kaufmann is not just a fine investigative historian – she is a superb story-teller.' —Alex Renton, author of Blood Legacy
'This marvellously written tale of nine heiresses forging their thoroughly absorbing lives with money from slavery gives us an entirely fresh insight into Georgian and Victorian Britain, but more importantly it is also a triumph of reparative history.' —Alan Lester, Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex
'Heiresses is truly remarkable. This superb book will guide thousands into a world new to them… and make them think… reflect…. think… think again.' —Marika Sherwood
'A fresh perspective on Britain’s involvement in slavery... A meticulously researched history.' —Kirkus
'In this fascinating study, Miranda Kaufmann explores the lives of nine women whose wealth derived from the slave trade. Scholarly and incredibly well researched, this will no doubt become essential recommended reading for those wishing to learn more about this shameful era.' —Historical Novel Society
'Heiresses takes us on a breath-taking tour of the eighteenth-century social world. It shows us, dramatically and undeniably, that women as well as men played a foundational part in the gruesome industry of transatlantic enslavement, and that the profits they garnered laced together almost every part of Georgian Britain and its empire. Powerfully written and scrupulously researched, Miranda Kaufmann's new book is a standing rebuke to those who would deny the facts of history, simply because they challenge an invented national self-image.' —David Andress, author of The French Revolution
'Heiresses is incredibly well researched, providing a fascinating (and sometimes shocking) insight into the stories of nine heiresses and their connections to plantations and enslaved people. Highly recommend!' —Melanie Backe-Hansen, author of A House Through Time
'Kaufmann has done diligent research in copious archives in Britain and the West Indies to trace the fortunes of nine of these heiresses, and has produced an eye-opening account of their lives and inheritances... The stories she tells will stay in the memory, and perhaps also on the conscience, for a long time.' —Literary Review
