Looking at women, business and finance in the nineteenth century, this book takes a look at women's roles in finance and investment, family-owned businesses, retailing, service activities, and the artisanal trades. It reveals that elite and middle-class women often manipulated financial resources in a highly sophisticated manner.

Contents 1. Introduction Beatrice Craig, Robert Beachy and Alastair Owens 2. 'Making some provision for the contingencies to which their sex is particularly liable': Women and Investment in early nineteenth-century England Alastair Owens (Queen Mary, University of London) 3. 'The Silent Partners': Women, capital and the development of the financial system in nineteenth century Sweden Tom Petersson (Uppsala University, Sweden) 4. 'Where have all the businesswomen gone?' Images and reality in the life of nineteenth-century middle-class women in northern France Beatrice Craig (University of Ottawa, Canada) 5. 'Profit and Propriety': Sophie Henschel and gender management in the German locomotive industry Robert Beachy (Goucher College, USA) 6. Artisan women and management in nineteenth-century Barcelona Juanjo Romero-Marin 7. Women and Publishing in Nineteenth Century Spain Gloria Espigado, University of Cadiz, Spain 8. Businesswomen in Austria Irene Bandhauer-Schffmann (University of Klagenfurt, Austria) 9. Belgium's Tradeswomen Valrie Piette (University of Brussels, Belgium) 10. Limited Opportunities? Female retailing in nineteenth-century Sweden Tom Ericsson (Umea University, Sweden) 11. Retailing, respectability and the independent woman in nineteenth century London Alison C. Kay (Research Fellow, Department of Geography, King's College London) 12. Hidden Professions? Female 'placers' of domestic servants in nineteenth-century Dutch cities Marlou Schrover (Leiden University, The Netherlands) 13. The business of sex: Evaluating prostitution in the German port city of Hamburg Julia Bruggeman (De Pauw University, USA)

Looking at women, business and finance in the long nineteenth century, this book challenges our traditional understanding of 'separate spheres' - whereby men operated in the public world of work and women in the private realm of the domestic.