Sarah Newton (1723-1794) -- Fances Dalzell (1729-1778) -- Mary Ramsay (1717-1794) -- Jane Cholmeley (c. 1744-1836) -- Martha Baker (1747-1809) -- Jane Jarvis (1772-1796) -- Elizabeth Vassall (1771-1845) -- Isabella Bell Franks (1868-1855) -- Anna Susanna Taylor (1781-1853)

"From Jamaica and Charleston to Sierra Leone, India, and back to Britain, this is the story of the heiresses and the role they played in the history of enslavement. Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was a fact universally acknowledged that any man in want of a great fortune ought to find himself a Caribbean heiress. Their assets, the product of the exploitation of enslaved African men, women, and children, enabled them to marry into the top tiers of the aristocracy and influence society and politics. They fell in love (not always with their husbands), eloped, divorced, squandered fortunes, commissioned art, threw parties, went mad and (in once case) faked a daughter's death. In her much anticipated follow up to Black Tudors, Miranda Kaufmann peers beneath our pastel-hued, Jane Austen-inspired image of the Georgian heiress to reveal a murky world of inheritance, fortune-hunting and human exploitation. She also unearths the stories of the people the heiresses enslaved, whose labor funded their lifestyles and with whom their fates were intimately intertwined. Heiresses provides a compelling and often shocking account of how Britain profited and continues to profit from enslavement. In the vein of landmark books such as Empireland, Natives, They Were Her Property, and White Debt, Heiresses promises to expand and challenge our understanding of history." --

Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was a fact universally acknowledged that any man in want of a great fortune ought to find himself a Caribbean heiress. Their assets, the product of the exploitation of enslaved African men, women, and children, enabled them to marry into the top tiers of the aristocracy and influence society and politics. They fell in love (not always with their husbands), eloped, divorced, squandered fortunes, comissioned art, threw parties, went mad, and (in one case) faked a daughter's death. In her much anticipated follow up to Black Tudors, Miranda Kaufmann peers beneath our pastel-hued, Jane Austen-inspired image of the Georgian heiress to reveal a murky world of inheritance, fortune-hunting, and human exploitation. She also unearths the stories of the people the heiresses enslaved, whose labor funded their lifestyles and with whom their fates were intimately intertwined. Heiress provides a compelling and often shocking account of how Britain profited and continues to benefit from enslavement. In the vein of landmark books such as Natives, They Were Her Property, and White Debt, Heiresses promises to expand and challenge our understanding of world history