Women and Property

`An impressive study.' - Germaine Greer. Amy Erickson combines legal, social and women's history in an imaginative and methodically interesting way to chart the limits and the contradictions of women as property owners.

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This ground-breaking book reveals the economic reality of ordinary women between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. Drawing on little-known sources, Amy Louise Erickson reconstructs day-to-day lives, showing how women owned, managed and inherited property on a scale previously unrecognised. Her complex and fascinating research, which contrasts the written laws with the actual practice, completely revises the traditional picture of women's economic status in pre-industrial England. Women and Property is essential reading for anyone interested in women, law and the past.