As the editors of this book acknowledge, women's lives, during the period under consideration, are most often written about “in terms of poverty, powerlessness and absence of money” (1). Where moneyed women have attracted attention, their wealth has been attributed to inheritance or the shrewd management of advisors, and their contribution to the economy has been regarded as peripheral. Women themselves have been characterized as cautious and even vulnerable investors, lacking in financial acumen, predominantly risk-averse, and often in need of protection from fraudsters and cheats. The consequence of these stereotypes is that women's financial affairs have received relatively little attention from business, accounting, and financial historians. This collection of essays goes some way toward remedying this omission.

The focus is chiefly on the experiences of British women during the period from 1700 to 1950, and the essays are wide-ranging, covering investment behavior, money-management skills, the keeping of accounts, inheritance and will-making, aspects of women's working lives, and society's perceptions of women's financial dealings and behavior. In addition, short essays, which precede each major section of the volume, offer an account of the legal and regulatory environment in which women operated.

Tying the essays together are questions about how women acquired and utilized financial knowledge and skills. The reader is introduced to Octavia Hill, social reformer, philanthropist, manager, and accountant, who, in an essay by Stephen P. Walker, is shown to have used accounts to maintain order and discipline within her philanthropic housing initiatives and to both gather and preserve knowledge. In Christine Wiskin's essay, we meet Charlotte Matthews, “a formidable figure with an impressive clientele for her banking and bill-broking business” (78), who learned her trade as a hard-working spouse in her husband's counting house and, after his demise, maintained her business in spite of the difficult economic and political climate in which she operated. John Black's account of female staff in the UK Army Pay Department shows us that women were able to turn those types of skills to good use within the new world of clerical work.

That female investors could profit from their knowledge and understanding of financial systems is suggested by Ann M. Carlos, Karen Maguire, and Larry Neal in an essay that argues that women who invested in Bank of England stock during the South Sea Bubble demonstrated considerable financial acumen and indeed were able to turn greater profits than did their male counterparts. Anne Laurence shows us that the Hastings sisters were less fortunate in their choice of South Sea stock, but the sisters’ activity still demonstrates an ability to negotiate the male world of speculative trading.

The significance of “gentlewomanly” capitalism is another theme of this volume. In particular, the importance of women's contributions as investors in British and Irish joint-stock companies throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is highlighted. Mark Freeman, Robin Pearson, and James Taylor offer evidence of women's persistent and increasing involvement in joint-stock investment and note that their findings show no strong evidence in support of the notion of separate spheres. Lucy A. Newton and Philip L. Cottrell's essay provides quantitative evidence of female involvement in the first English and Welsh commercial joint-stock banks, again showing an increasing willingness by women to invest as the sector developed. Claire Swan's rather more tentative conclusions show that women constituted a significant proportion of shareholders in Scottish investment trusts.

The essays focus mainly on the British experience, but other perspectives are offered. Eve Rosenhaft's essay concerns the financial acumen of female investors in eighteenth-century Germany and offers the most useful comparative fit with the British experience. Other perspectives are offered by Nancy Marie Robertson on the legal challenges faced by businesswomen in the United States and by Susan M. Yohn concerning women's departments in U.S. banks. We also find essays by Tom Petersson on the financial revolution in nineteenth-century Sweden and by Stefania Licini on women's wealth in nineteenth-century Milan. Finally, an overview by Naoko Komori of Japanese women's relationship to money brings the story of women's financial dealings up to the present day. All present excellent insights into their subject but sit rather less comfortably within the volume.

Because of the inclusion of so many essays in the collection, individual authors have been allocated relatively little space, and inevitably this leaves the reader with the feeling that some contributions have been cut off just as their authors were warming to their themes. But, of course, many of the authors concerned have published on the contribution of women to financial capitalism in other forms. Indeed, longer versions of some of the essays presented here can be found in a special issue of Accounting, Business and Financial History published in 2006, and, thus, if this volume serves as an introduction to this work, it will be no bad thing. Moreover, taken together, this collection of essays provides a fascinating introduction into the financial behavior of women, offering further evidence to complicate the notion of separate spheres and demonstrating that rather than being helpless, risk-averse, and naive, women were resourceful, well-informed, and effective managers of the funds at their disposal.