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The Smart Kindle Edition
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage Digital
- Publication dateJune 8, 2011
- File size1404 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Sarah Bakewell has written a scholarly biography that reads like a detective novel with a historical setting... full of sharp pen-portraits, lively asides and quirky details... every bit as colourful and enjoyable as the title suggests.” – Independent
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
From the Back Cover
“Sarah Bakewell has written a scholarly biography that reads like a detective novel with a historical setting... full of sharp pen-portraits, lively asides and quirky details... every bit as colourful and enjoyable as the title suggests.” – Independent
From the Trade Paperback edition.
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B0052Z3H94
- Publisher : Vintage Digital (June 8, 2011)
- Publication date : June 8, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 1404 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 320 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #275,181 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #38 in Historical Italian & Roman Biographies
- #44 in Historical French Biographies
- #130 in Ancient Rome Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Sarah Bakewell was born in Bournemouth on the English south coast, but spent most of her childhood in Sydney, Australia, after several years travelling the hippie trail through Asia with her parents. Returning to Britain, she studied philosophy at the University of Essex and worked as a curator of early printed books at London’s Wellcome Library for ten years before devoting herself to full-time writing in 2002. She now lives mostly in London, and teaches Creative Writing at Kellogg College, Oxford.
Her four books are all biographical, and the most recent two, 'How to Live: a life of Montaigne' and 'At the Existentialist Cafe', also explore philosophical ideas. 'How to Live' won the Duff Cooper Prize and the U.S. National Book Critics' Circle Award for Biography, and 'At the Existentialist Cafe' was chosen in 2016 as one of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year.
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Her first book, ‘The Smart’, is just as accomplished as those others, and recounts the life of an extraordinary woman about whom, I am now ashamed to confess, I previously knew nothing. Margaret Caroline Rudd was an adventuress of particular acclaim. Having been born in modest circumstances in eighteenth century Ireland, and orphaned early in life, she escaped penury through marriage and concerted opportunism, coming to establish herself on the social scene in Georgian London.
Living on her wits (and not reluctant to deploy her considerable physical and social charms), and associating herself in turn with a succession of morally dubious men, she managed to survive in London. At hew lowest ebb she turned to street prostitution, but was able to pull herself up and establish herself as a highly desirable courtesan, in which role she derived considerable fortunes from vulnerable and naïve gentlemen associates.
Such a career might not distinguish her from many other ambitious and resourceful women who had to make their way in a life that was so iniquitously designed in men’s favour. Her claim to fame, or rather infamy, rests in her skill as a forger and her imaginative exploitation of the men with whom she lived, and her ability to capitalise on loopholes in the newly established system of financial bonds and promissory notes. With her confederates in this ploy, the identical Perreau twins, Robert and Daniel (the latter of whom was her common-law husband), she devised a means of living in extraordinary luxury, though the fragility of this wealth would eventually emerge, with the three of them continually having to pass off new bonds to pay off the approaching debts of previous ones. They were, in effect employing an early iteration of a Ponzi scheme, founded on forged certificates, that snowballed beyond their control. It became merely a question of when, rather than if, they would be exposed.
But when disaster struck, and they were called to account for the validity or otherwise of the bonds they had passed, the story goes off on a wholly new tangent, with Ms Rudd demonstrating further depth of resource and spirit.
The book reads almost like a detective story, offering fascinating insights into the financial and social history of the late eighteenth century. Bakewell writes with great clarity, captivating the reader from the opening paragraphs. I feel that there is a television adaptation simply crying out to be made from this book.
Not at all dry or long winded.
Flows well and easily read.
Highly recommended.