The Commercial Lives of Irish Women, 1850–1922

This book examines Irish women’s lives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from a new angle, investigating how they inherited, bought, or started up businesses. Some guided their operations to impressive profit and growth, while others coped with devastating failure. The many and varied primary sources which inform Antonia Hart’s research place all these businesswomen in public-facing roles, in commercial environments, making economic decisions and operating with autonomy which they