Women interacted with pirates in a variety of capacities in the golden age of piracy. In his pursuit of this previously hidden female element, John C. Appleby enriches the understanding of piracy more generally. He works with a broad definition, unearthing many versions of the activity, from small raids on river vessels to more highly orchestrated and lucrative attacks on deep-sea sailing ships laden with colonial cargo. Though female pirates have attracted significant historical attention, they were responsible for a very minor component of the feminine involvement in marine plunder according to Appleby. Women and English Piracy instead foregrounds wives, partners, prostitutes, and victims, exposing a complex range of feminine experiences in Britain, the English Colonies, the Caribbean, and Madagascar.

Women and English Piracy charts a “narrowing of female agency” (88) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the base of pirate activities moved from the British Isles to more far-flung locales in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The first century of the period under investigation offered significantly more opportunities for women, Appleby argues. He highlights their role as receivers of booty, profiting directly from the thefts that occurred to coastal and river vessels in the British Isles, particularly Ireland. Sensational tales of authorities' attempts to bring pirates to justice being thwarted by female relatives and friends showcase female agency and unity in the piratical enterprise. This diminishes as the perpetrators of the crime moved farther afield after 1640.

In the Caribbean sphere, women's economic gains from buccaneering tended to be limited to their role as victims, prostitutes, or temporary companions for the migratory seafarers. Appleby is aware of the complexity of these relationships and the potential significance of race and culture in determining the level of exploitation of the women involved. The interethnic relationships that emerged between pirates and women in Madagascar, the Caribbean, and Guinea are difficult to discover, but Appleby has found enough traces to support existing suspicions that these were highly exploitative and potentially quite brutal. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Appleby is able to form a brighter picture of the white victims of piracy. In particular, the wives of English sailors captured and held for ransom by Barbary raiders are celebrated as resourceful petitioners. Though propertied male interests often lay behind the most successful petitions, female petitioners nonetheless can be applauded for making use of the few avenues that lay open to them.

Exposing the feminine side of a history that has traditionally been presented as almost universally masculine is no mean feat, and it requires a creative and judicious approach to the primary sources. Appleby has amassed an impressive collection of material, from state papers at the highest level of government to parish poor relief petitions. He uses official trial documents alongside the numerous printed accounts of pirates that were published for a popular audience. The latter must be treated carefully, and Appleby is duly cautious. He recognizes, for example, that their depictions of the harsh treatment of women could be exaggerated to enhance pirates' appearance of profligacy. Equally, English sources made much of the alleged piratical activities of Irish widow Grainne O'Malley as part of a greater goal “to deliberately feminize and emasculate Gaelic society” (199). Among the oyer and terminer records of the High Court of Admiralty survives a rare collection of letters from wives attempting to reconnect with their husbands from distant shores. Appleby mines this rich resource and reproduces poignant excerpts attesting to these women's love, devotion, and repeated faith in their husband's return. These sorts of snippets are far rarer than the popular accounts and trials of individual pirates, however. Thus, aside from the sections discussing letters and petitions, Women and English Piracy largely consists of more lengthy anecdotes from different stories where women are mentioned, woven together into a coherent tapestry.

Scholars straddling a variety of fields invariably find themselves more versed in one than the other, and Appleby is definitely more grounded in the scholarship on piracy than in that on women over the same period. This is perhaps why the book's introduction is followed by a chapter, titled “The Rise and Fall of English Piracy from the 1540s to the 1720s,” in which women are almost entirely absent. It is problematic that a book purporting to focus on women would include such a separate chapter, and unfortunate that Appleby did not instead divide this contextualizing material into smaller segments and place them at relevant points in the introduction and other chapters. That said, Women and English Piracy is far from ignorant of key works of women's history of the period on gender, family life, crime, and work. The book is particularly impressive in the way it presents the complex attitudes surrounding early modern women who were prostitutes or rape victims. Appleby sensitively recognizes the many constraints within which early modern women labored, yet he also celebrates their agency and ingenuity where appropriate.

Women and English Piracy concludes with a call for further investigation into the gendered interactions in pirate culture. It also highlights the need for “detailed work on the structure and organization of piracy” (229) that explores the complex ways that booty made its way into the licit economy. The book also asks others to build on its emphasis on the role of the shifting locus of piracy—its shift from coastal raids to long-distance colonial targets—in affecting the experience and identity of associates and victims. John Appleby is to be commended for pushing the inquiry in these promising directions by highlighting women's previously hidden involvement in the piratical enterprise.