| Title | : | Eliza Lucas Pinckney: An Independent Woman in the Age of Revolution |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition, Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | - |
| Publication | : | Yale University Press |
Eliza Lucas Pinckney (17221793) reshaped the colonial South Carolina economy with her innovations in indigo production and became one of the wealthiest and most respected women in a world dominated by men. Born on the Caribbean island of Antigua, she spent her youth in England before settling in the American South and enriching herself through the successful management of plantations dependent on enslaved laborers. Tracing her extraordinary journey and drawing on the vast written records she left behindincluding family and business letters, spiritual musings, elaborate recipes, macabre medical treatments, and astute observations about her world and herselfthis engaging biography offers a rare womans first person perspective into the tumultuous years leading up to and through the Revolutionary War and unsettles many common assumptions regarding the place and power of women in the eighteenth century.
Eliza Lucas Pinckney: An Independent Woman in the Age of Revolution Reviews
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This is a fascinating history book that reads almost like a novel. Eliza Lucas Pinckney and her family members left behind so many letters that the author was able to reconstruct so many details about her life, her beliefs and her activities that the reader comes to feel as if they know Eliza personally. She led an incredibly active life and interacted with many local and national leaders in colonial South Carolina. She was put in charge of running her family's plantation at the age of sixteen, married into a prominent Charleston family, and became a leading actor (both directly and indirectly through her children) in the running of Charleston for almost 50 years. I would recommend this book for anyone with an interest in the colonial South and the role that women and families played during that period. Fascinating, I could not put the book down!
