Women And Their Money 1700 1950

This book examines women's financial activity from the early days of the stock market in eighteenth century England and the South Sea Bubble to the mid-twentieth century. The essays demonstrate how many women managed their own finances despite legal and social restrictions and show that women were neither helpless, incompetent and risk-averse, nor were they unduly cautious and conservative. Rather, many women learnt about money and made themselves effective and engaged managers of the funds at their disposal. The essays focus on Britain, from eighteenth-century London, to the expansion of British financial markets of the nineteenth century, with comparative essays dealing with the US, Italy, Sweden and Japan. Hitherto, writing about women and money has been restricted to their management of household finances or their activities as small business women. This book examines the clear evidence of women's active engagement in financial matters, much neglected in historical literature, especially women's management of capital. .

This book examines women's financial activity from the early days of the stock market in eighteenth century England and the South Sea Bubble to the mid-twentieth century. The essays demonstrate how many women managed their own finances despite legal and social restrictions and show that women were neither helpless, incompetent and risk-averse, nor were they unduly cautious and conservative. Rather, many women learnt about money and made themselves effective and engaged managers of the funds at their disposal. The essays focus on Britain, from eighteenth-century London, to the expansion of British financial markets of the nineteenth century, with comparative essays dealing with the US, Italy, Sweden and Japan. Hitherto, writing about women and money has been restricted to their management of household finances or their activities as small business women. This book examines the clear evidence of women's active engagement in financial matters, much neglected in historical literature, especially women's management of capital. .

There has been considerable research into the growth of limited companies in Great Britain in the 19th century, but not much is known about their investors, both men and women. This interdisciplinary book, based on new research, investigates the identity and behaviour of these investors.

The Handbook brings together leading international scholars to provide a comprehensive overview of research and theory on the sociology of finance and the workings of financial institutions and financial markets. It will serve as a reference point for this rapidly expanding discipline.

Women, Literature and Finance in Victorian Britain: Cultures of Investment defines the cultures that emerged in response to the democratization of the stock market in nineteenth-century Britain when investing provided access to financial independence for women. Victorian novels represent those economic networks in realistic detail and are preoccupied with the intertwined economic and affective lives of characters. Analyzing evidence about the lives of real investors together with fictional examples, including case studies of four authors who were also investors, Nancy Henry argues that investing was not just something women did in Victorian Britain; it was a distinctly modern way of thinking about independence, risk, global communities and the future in general.

Few financial crises, historically speaking, have attracted such attention as the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles of 1719–20. The twin bubbles had major economic and political implications, sending shock waves through the whole of Europe; they astonished contemporaries, and, to a large extent, they still resonate today. This volume offers new readings of these events, drawing on fresh research and new evidence that challenge traditional interpretations. The chapters engage, in particular, with: the geographical frame of the 1719-20 bubbles their social, cultural, economic and political impact the ways in which contemporaries understood speculation the contributions and impact of a diverse array of participants popular and print memorialization of the events Overall, the volume helps to rewrite the history of the 1719–20 bubbles and to recontextualize their place within eighteenth-century history.

This book examines the writings of seven English women economists from the period 1735–1811. It reveals that contrary to what standard accounts of the history of economic thought suggest, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women intellectuals were undertaking incisive and gender-sensitive analyses of the economy. Women’s Economic Thought in the Romantic Age argues that established notions of what constitutes economic enquiry, topics, and genres of writing have for centuries marginalised the perspectives and experiences of women and obscured the knowledge they recorded in novels, memoirs, or pamphlets. This has led to an underrepresentation of women in the canon of economic theory. Using insights from literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and feminist economics, the book develops a transdisciplinary methodology that redresses this imbalance and problematises the distinction between literary and economic texts. In its in-depth readings of selected writings by Sarah Chapone, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Mary Robinson, Priscilla Wakefield, Mary Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen, this book uncovers the originality and topicality of their insights on the economics of marriage, women and paid work, and moral economics. Combining historical analysis with conceptual revision, Women’s Economic Thought in the Romantic Age retrieves women’s overlooked intellectual contributions and radically breaks down the barriers between literature and economics. It will be of interest to researchers and students from across the humanities and social sciences, in particular the history of economic thought, English literary and cultural studies, gender studies, economics, eighteenth-century and Romantic studies, social history, and the history of ideas.

This book considers the promise of women's and gender history for revolutionizing our understanding of the past while also acknowledging the current national political, financial, and other contextual realities that can (and do) constrain or promote the possibilities for researching and writing women's history. The editors assert that the promise of women's and gender history is a cutting edge field of research, "a revolutionary development in the politics of historical scholarship," essential for understanding the human past. Further, they argue for the inseparability of women's history and gendered analytical approaches. The contributors to the volume address questions including: what have been the achievements of women's and gender history over the past two decades? To what extent has it succeeded in making women's history an integral part of historical study rather than an optional specialist area? What impact has the study of manhood, masculinities, and men's gendered power had on our understanding of women's lives? What is the relationship between gender studies and new critical histories of colonialism and empire, contact zones, cross-cultural encounters, and racialization? How is new work on cultural geography and spatial categories impacting on our historical understandings of bodily difference? This book was originally published as a special issue of the Women’s History Review.