The story of Harriot Mellon is a unique, individual and perceptive insight into a vanished world of deprivation and privilege. Joan Perkin's book is the amazing story of a remarkable woman: Harriot Mellon, the poor child of strolling players in the late eighteenth century, who rose to become a star at Drury Lane in the heyday of Sarah Siddons and Dorothy Jordan, and the protegee and second wife of Thomas Coutts the royal banker. Annoyed by his three daughters, all married into the aristocracy, who treated her badly, he left her the Bank, which she doubled in value in fifteen years. A famous...

Joan Perkin demonstrates clearly in this book that women were not content to remain inferior to men in the 'bonds of matrimony'.