BOOK REVIEW: The Firing: Eleanor Coade and her Remarkable Stone by Theresa Shiban

 I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

The Firing: Eleanor Coade and her Remarkable Stone by Theresa Shiban is a beautifully written biographical novel telling the life story of the eighteenth-to-early-nineteenth century British businesswoman, Eleanor Coade.

Eleanor’s first passion was not business, but sculpture. A skilled sculptress in her own right, it took her father’s bankruptcy, and her desire to support herself and her beloved consumptive younger sister, to inspire her remarkable talent for business. Her success was unusual for a woman of the time. Infuriatingly, the law of the land entitled the men in women’s lives to claim all their earnings for themselves. This law, and Eleanor’s father’s willingness to exploit it for his own benefit, provides much of the conflict in the story.

Eleanor made her first fortune as a linen draper, and this allowed her to return to sculpture. She eventually bought a failing factory that made “artificial stone.” The product was of poor quality, but Eleanor saw its potential. With her workers, she perfected the formula for a mixture of clay and stone that could be molded into statuary and architectural adornments, and it is largely for this that she became famous and very wealthy.

The blending of Eleanor’s personal life and professional achievements drive this novel along. It’s an engrossing story of a woman who deserves to be better remembered. Biographical fiction at its finest!