A Woman of Substance:  A Dynastic Novel of Money and Power, Passion and Revenge by Barbara Taylor Bradford is a 755-page hardcover published in 1979 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.  The price-clipped dust jacket is in poor condition, with numerous chips, tears, and discoloration.  Inside, the half-cloth cover has minor bumping to the spine.  Otherwise, the book is in good condition.

Book Summary

Emma Harte Lowther Ainsley is seventy-eight years old and one of the richest, most powerful women in the world.  Self-reliant and ruthless, she uses money as a weapon and adversity as a tool.  

In her poverty-stricken youth, Emma exhibited an uncommon amount of initiative and intelligence even as a maidservant on a Yorkshire estate.  Pregnant and unwed at fifteen, she fled her shameful situation to seek anonymity in a grimy manufacturing town.  Here the cogs of machinery would become wheels of fortune for the enterprising young woman.  Her business began as a small food shop of homemade treats and expanded into a major department store.  At the age of twenty-five she was a successful businesswoman, and by fifty she was an international corporate power. 

Emma's ambition, sacrifice, and fearless optimism had built a financial empire deficient in only one commodity--personal happiness.  Between ill-fated romances and discordant marriages she fought death, war, even her own children, plus the haunting memory of her first love.  Only two men--one a friend, one a lover--would tear Emma's mind away from the all-absorbing business with which she tried to fill her empty heart.  One would be a source of strength throughout her days, the other would produce the most devastating crisis of her long life.

A long and satisfying novel of money, power, and passion with contrasting glimpses of the stark realities of poverty alongside the grandeur and opulence of the English gentry.

ISBN:  0-385-12050-8