The stories behind my Heiresses paperback cover...

I’m delighted to share the beautiful cover for the Heiresses paperback - out in September but available to pre-order now. I thought you might be interested to know a bit about the images we used, from the portraits to the plantation scene, who the women were, and where the portraits are now… if so, read on…

THE HEIRESSES: As you may know, the book tells the stories of nine women who inherited wealth from Caribbean enslavement. Although portraits exist of all of them, not all are striking enough to become cover girls, and we did need full-length, high quality colour images, which is not always possible when the portrait is in an unidentified private collection or just a black and white print. You may remember Jamaican heiress Mary Oswald, née Ramsay (left) from the hardback cover. But now you get to see her in Zoffany’s original indigo blue. Her portrait, now in Room 34 of London’s National Gallery, was commissioned by her husband Richard – co-owner of Bance Island slaving fort, Sierra Leone, enslaver of over 200 people in East Florida, and the British negotiator of the peace that ended the American Revolutionary War in 1783. You can read more about the portrait (and the significant role Mary’s Jamaican fortune, keen business acumen and pointed opinions played in her husband’s success) in Chapter 3. Meanwhile, here’s what I had to say about the portrait:

On the right, we have Lady Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that one!), actually born Elizabeth Goodin Haughton, the mother of Anna Susanna Watson Taylor who features in Chapter 9. Elizabeth was also heiress to Jamaican plantations and people and this stunning portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, now in the Frick Collection in New York, complements the Zoffany perfectly. Here’s where she comes into the story…​

Again if you’d like to read more, and discover how the scandalous discovery of Elizabeth’s father’s bigamous marriage led to her cousins seizing the estates and demanding ‘mountains of gold’ it’s all there in Chapter 9.

THE PLANTATION SCENE: Or should we call it a forced labour camp or factory in the field? Lurking in the background is an image indicative of the source of the heiress’s wealth, that paid for these sorts of portraits and the lavish lifestyles they represent. This image is a detail from ‘Digging, or rather Hoeing, the Cane Holes’, one of ‘Ten views in the island of Antigua, in which are represented the process of sugar making, and the employment of the Negroes, in the field, boiling-house and distillery’, a series of aquatints based on drawings made by William A.V. Clark in 1823.

The accompanying text tells us this is the ‘most laborious’ part of the process, and that the view was taken from Weatherill’s Estate – now apparently a luxury hotel, with still functioning windmill. (I’m having to pull back here from going down a massive rabbit-hole looking at the former owners of Weatherill’s and where they ended up - I can see a Vice Admiral, a memorial in a Suffolk country church, and a fancy house in Egham, Surrey already, but must stop!)

More important is to note that images like these sanitise reality, for example these people are far more well-clothed than my sources show would really have been the case. But in terms of a book cover, it also didn’t seem right to use one of the more graphic depictions of violence and cruelty, as in a way that would inflict the pain all over again.

My approach in Heiresses has been wherever possible to name and highlight the life stories of the people these women enslaved, such as Betsy Newton who fled all the way from Barbados to London to confront her enslaver and demand freedom for herself and her children. Although I have not as yet found any of their portraits, I would love to see some created by modern artists, following the example of Michael Ohajuru’s John Blanke Project or Errol Ross Brewster’s portraits of Amba, and Jack Gladstone, leading figures in the Demerara Uprising of 1823.

So, there you have it, some of the stories behind the cover images, which I hope will whet your appetite to discover even more dramatic and scandalous stories of women whose trajectories link Britain indelibly to the fortunes made on the back of enslavement in the Caribbean.

What do you think? Do you see the cover differently now? Do you prefer the hardback, paperback, or even the US version? Which enslaved people from the book would you like to see a portrait of? Let me know…

Would be great to see you at one of my book events over the summer, more dates coming in the autumn… and as always if you don’t see your local venue on the list, feel free to invite me!

Pre-order Heiresses in paperback