Female Entrepreneurs in Eighteenth-Century London: a Prosopographical Study of Businesswomen in Lombard Street, Gracechurch Street and Cornhill in the

该项目将调查历史悠久的伦敦金融城一个富裕地区的各种行业的女商人，该地区靠近被认为是其商业中心的皇家交易所。这项个人学研究将追踪他们的职业培训、家庭环境、亲属关系和信用网络，并衡量他们的商业经营规模和寿命。这样做，它将回答一个问题：在普遍认为妇女参与经济活动的程度下降的时候，妇女是如何创建、维持和发展企业的？它将设法查明这些人的生活和背景中的任何显著特征，并评估这些特征是否随着时间的推移而发生变化，例如，随着一个人的婚姻状况和家庭状况的变化或对外部因素的反应。与迄今为止开展的其他研究相比，该项目力求在更长的时间内，利用更广泛的资料来源，更全面地了解首都妇女创业的情况。它将有助于在妇女工作领域的学术研究，但也告知我们的商业史和都市史的理解，并解决妇女在历史编纂的相对缺席。

This project will investigate businesswomen in a variety of trades in a wealthy geographic area in the historic City ofLondon, in close proximity to the Royal Exchange, considered its commercial heart. This prosopographical study willtrace their occupational training, family circumstances, kinship and credit networks and measure the size and longevity oftheir business operations. In so doing, it will answer the question: how did women create, maintain and grow businessesat a time when prevailing narratives suggest women's declining economic participation? It will seek to identify anynotable characteristics in these individuals' lives and backgrounds and assess whether these may have changed overtime, for example as one's marital status and family situation changed or in response to external factors. This projectseeks to provide a more comprehensive picture of female entrepreneurship in the capital over a greater span of time andutilising a wider range of sources than other studies undertaken to date. It will contribute to scholarship in the field ofwomen's work, but also inform our understanding of business history and metropolitan history and address the relativeabsence of women in the historiography of both.