Poor Richard's Women

Deborah Read Franklin and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father

Author  Nancy Rubin Stuart
Poor Richard's Women

Meet the overlooked women in history who loved, nurtured, and defended the famed American scientist and founding father.

“ . . . highlights a side of Ben Franklin too often ignored by historians . . . and provides a necessary reminder that the women who came into his life are as deserving of our attention as Ben himself.” —Carol Berkin, author of Revolutionary Mothers

Everyone knows Benjamin Franklin—the thrifty inventor-statesman of the Revolutionary era—but not about his love life. Poor Richard’s Women reveals the long-neglected voices of the women Ben loved and lost during his lifelong struggle between passion and prudence. The most prominent among them was Deborah Read Franklin, his common-law wife and partner for 44 years. Long dismissed by historians,…