Eliza Lucas Pinckney

“As scholars increasingly recognize, in spite of their legal disabilities women’s lives went beyond the domestic realm. Eliza defied not her era’s expectations, as Glover points out, but ours for eighteenth-century women. Thanks to her captivating book, we understand that distinction better.”—Amanda B. Moniz, William and Mary Quarterly

Winner of the James Bradford Biography Prize, sponsored by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

Winner of the 2020 George C. Rogers Jr. Book Award, presented annually by the South Carolina Historical Society

“An insightful account of an enterprising Southern planter matriarch. Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s relations with the British Court, her family, and the enslaved people under her sway come vividly to life.”—Flora Fraser, author of The Washingtons: George and Martha

“Glover not only recovers the life of a remarkable eighteenth-century woman, she also issues a challenge to the gendered narrative of the Age of Revolution. Eliza Lucas Pinckney would undoubtedly approve!”—Carol Berkin, author of Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence

“In lively prose, Lorri Glover brings all of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world to life in this intriguing biography.”—Ann M. Little, author of The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright

“In a stunning feat of historical biography, Lorri Glover recovers the world of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, an elite white woman whose complex life challenged the gender boundaries of her time. This long-overdue study enormously expands our understanding of both the restrictions and possibilities shaping southern women’s lives during the era of the American Revolution.”—Rosemarie Zagarri, author of Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic