Author Talk with Nancy Rubin Stuart: Poor Richard's Women

REGISTER HERE. (Registration is free but required)

Join us as we welcome author Nancy Rubin Stuart to the bookshop to talk about her latest book Poor Richard’s Women: Deborah Read Franklin and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father on Thursday July 7th at 7:00pm. Stuart will sign copies of the book after her presentation. Copies will be for sale at the event. If you can’t make it in person, you can order a signed copy here to be picked up at the shop or shipped to you.

*Special Guest appearance of Ben Franklin himself!*
The event will be held outside under our event tent behind the bookshop. The shop will be open for browsing before the event. In the case of rain, the event will primarily be a meet & greet and a signing inside the shop, due to lack of indoor space. Either way you’ll get the opportunity to connect with the author!

ABOUT THE BOOK

“An engrossing look at the human side of Benjamin Franklin . . . Using a post-feminist lens that’s critical of gender essentialism, Stuart rescues these women from obscurity . . . This is a terrific read: poignant, provocative, and probing.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review

A vivid portrait of the women who loved, nurtured, and defended America’s famous scientist and founding father.

Everyone knows Benjamin Franklin—the thrifty inventor-statesman of the Revolutionary era—but not about his love life. Poor Richard’s Women reveals the long-neglected voices of the women Ben loved and lost during his lifelong struggle between passion and prudence. The most prominent among them was Deborah Read Franklin, his common-law wife and partner for 44 years. Long dismissed by historians, she was an independent, politically savvy woman and devoted wife who raised their children, managed his finances, and fought off angry mobs at gunpoint while he traipsed about England.

Weaving detailed historical research with emotional intensity and personal testimony, Nancy Rubin Stuart traces Deborah’s life and those of Ben’s other romantic attachments through their personal correspondence. We are introduced to Margaret Stevenson, the widowed landlady who managed Ben’s life in London; Catherine Ray, the 23-year-old New Englander with whom he traveled overnight and later exchanged passionate letters; Madame Brillon, the beautiful French musician who flirted shamelessly with him, and the witty Madame Helvetius, who befriended the philosophes of pre-Revolutionary France and brought Ben to his knees.

What emerges from Stuart’s pen is a colorful and poignant portrait of women in the age of revolution. Set two centuries before the rise of feminism, Poor Richard’s Women depicts the feisty, often-forgotten women dear to Ben’s heart who, despite obstacles, achieved an independence rarely enjoyed by their peers in that era.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nancy Rubin Stuart is an award-winning author and journalist whose eight nonfiction books focus upon women and social history. Her most recently published works include Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married and The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation. A former journalist, Stuart has written for the New York Times, Huffington Post, the New England Quarterly, and national magazines. She serves as executive director of the Cape Cod Writers Center. Connect with her at nancyrubinstuart.com.

Event Address:

Titcomb’s Bookshop
432 Route 6A, East Sandwich, MA 02537