The Jamestown Brides: The Bartered Wives of the New World

New
Paperback
2019
$11.61

'Compelling... A real pleasure to read.' - BBC History Magazine

In 1621, fifty-six English women crossed the Atlantic in response to the Virginia Company of London's call for maids 'young and uncorrupt' to make wives for the planters of its new colony in Virginia.While the women travelled of their own accord, the company was in effect selling them at a profit for a bride price of 150 lbs of tobacco for each woman sold. The rewards would flow to investors in the near-bankrupt company. But what did the women want from the enterprise? Why did they agree to make the perilous crossing to a wild and dangerous land, where six out of seven European settlers died within their first few years? And what happened to them in the end?

Synopsis

'Compelling... A real pleasure to read.' - BBC History Magazine

In 1621, fifty-six English women crossed the Atlantic in response to the Virginia Company of London's call for maids 'young and uncorrupt' to make wives for the planters of its new colony in Virginia.While the women travelled of their own accord, the company was in effect selling them at a profit for a bride price of 150 lbs of tobacco for each woman sold. The rewards would flow to investors in the near-bankrupt company. But what did the women want from the enterprise? Why did they agree to make the perilous crossing to a wild and dangerous land, where six out of seven European settlers died within their first few years? And what happened to them in the end?

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
Edition: Main
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 04 Jul 2019
ISBN 10: 178239916X
ISBN 13: 9781782399162

Media Reviews

I love this kind of historical writing, with the stitching showing... Engaged and thoughtful, she has given her women an existence they would recognise. -- Lucy Moore * Literary Review *
An evocative and painstakingly researched account of these early female settlers, who have lacked a voice, an identity, even a name, until now. From 400 years ago, they step from these pages and speak to us. -- Hilary Davies * The Tablet, 'Books of the Year' *
Compelling... A real pleasure to read. * BBC History Magazine *
With extraordinary scholarship and painstaking use of contemporary texts Potter succeeds in her professed task of bearing witness to the lives of young women unknown to history... Full of sensational material... * Times Literary Supplement *
Potter tells the story using a rich range of sources - pamphlets, ballads, sermons - and travels to flesh out gaps... She writes well and hauntingly, of women penned like chickens in the gloom , of their shock on arrival at a tiny, dilapidated Virginian town thousands of miles from the English capital. * The Times *

Author Bio

Jennifer Potter is the author of four novels and six works of non-fiction, most recently The Jamestown Brides, The Untold Story of England's 'maids for Virginia' (Atlantic, 2018). Other titles published by Atlantic include The Rose, A True History; Seven Flowers And How They Shaped Our World; and Strange Blooms, The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants. A long-time reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and an accredited Royal Literary Fund (RLF) Consultant Fellow, she currently runs writing workshops for students and staff at British universities and was recently appointed one of the first RLF Writing Fellows at the British Library.