A Woman of Substance

Written by Barbara Taylor Bradford

Narrated by Diana Quick

The unputdownable multi-million copy bestseller charting the rags to riches story of Emma Harte

In 1905 a young kitchen maid leaves Fairley Hall. Emma Harte is sixteen, single and pregnant.

By 1968 she is one of the richest women in the world, ruler of a business empire stretching from Yorkshire to the glittering cities of America and the rugged vastness of Australia. But what is the price she has paid?

A Woman of Substance is as impossible to put down as it is to forget. This multi-million copy bestseller is truly a novel of our times.

'Queen of the genre' Sunday Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9780007502189

Barbara Taylor Bradford

Barbara Taylor Bradford, OBE, is one of the world's best loved storytellers. Her 1979 debut novel, A Woman of Substance, ranks as one of the top-ten bestselling books of all-time, with more than 30 million copies in print. All her novels to date have been major worldwide bestsellers. Barbara was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, the only child of Freda and Winston Taylor. She grew up in the Leeds suburb of Armley and left school at 15 for the typing pool at the Yorkshire Evening Post. At 16 she was a reporter, and at 18 she became the paper’s first woman’s page editor. By the time she was 20, she had moved to London where she became a fashion editor and columnist on Fleet Street. Barbara started writing fiction when she was just seven, and sold her first short story to a magazine for seven shillings and sixpence when she was ten years old. Barbara’s books have sold more than 91 million copies worldwide in more than 90 countries and 40 languages. Ten of her books were made into Emmy-nominated miniseries and television movies by her late husband, the film producer Robert Bradford. In 2007, Barbara was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for her contributions to literature. A passionate supporter of literacy, she is an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust; in 2019 she was made an ambassador for Women in Journalism and in the same year she was presented with The Leeds Award, which recognised her loyalty to, and depiction of, her Yorkshire roots. Her original manuscripts are archived at the Brotherton Library at Leeds University, alongside the works of the Brontë sisters. She lives in New York City. Her official website is: www.barbarataylorbradford.com

Reviews for A Woman of Substance

[richjj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Meh, Emma may be a woman of substance, but the book itself hasn't got much.

[theresahope · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Love this book. Emma is one strong willed woman. Fights her way to top and does everything she can to stay there. I was easily pulled into her world and enjoyed being there through the good times and bad.

[woodcat_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Yes, yes, yes, she's gritty, determined, beautiful, nobody's fool, etc etc. Does Ms Bradford have to keep repeating it. I get the picture.

[kerril_11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took me a little while to get into this book, some of the passages seem excessively wordy, but once I got into the story, I fell in love. Emma is such a strong, captivating character, you can't help but get wrapped up in her story.

[cataryna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful novel about the strength and dedication one woman has to pull herself out of poverty and the sacrifices she makes to survive and become powerful in a world and era dominated by men. It is also about the revenge that guides her throughout her life and how she comes to terms with it. It is also about destiny and how it always finds a way of coming through. My only negative and the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars, is its length. At a little over 900 pages you really have to love the story to want to see it through, which for me, I felt the author did a wonderful job of making that happen.

[nancy5jean · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Outstanding--Holds the attention completely--Love Emma Hartebut boy did she ever have some enemies

[jenreidreads · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I tried to like this book. I really did. I loved Jennifer Donnelly's The Tea Rose, and a friend recommended this one because it's also a family drama and historical fiction. But the main difference between these two novels is the quality of the writing—Barbara Taylor Bradford's writing style was annoying, frankly. Every description was excessive and flowery (the elegant clothes, rooms, furniture...), and the plot was incredibly predictable. I couldn't feel attached to any of the characters; the main one, Emma Harte, because she was so cold to everyone (and not in a good way like Scarlett O'Hara, who Bradford was clearly trying to channel), or anyone else, because I knew exactly what would happen to them (and which ones would die) as soon as they were introduced. Emma's great revenge scene was very anti-climactic, and her supposed "great" romance was a cheap imitation of Scarlett and Rhett (and with GWTW being my absolute favorite everything, that was particularly grating). I slogged through the whole thing because I figured things had to improve after the flowering beginning—and they did, mostly, during the middle when Emma moved away from Fairley Hall to begin making her fortune—but the ending was incredibly disappointing. But I couldn't not read the last 100 pages after reading the first 800! Save yourself the trouble and avoid this one.

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I love historical fiction, and to my mind there aren't enough that focus on the drama of building a business, so the premise of this appealed to me. It's the rag to riches story of a British woman who went from lowly maid to powerful head of a business empire in the early 20th century when women weren't by and large able to rise to such heights. However, the writing style here was puerile romance aisle, and far too wretched to make me willing to stay with this for over 900 trade paperback pages. Within ten pages we have such cliched and purple writing as "implacable mouth" and eyes "cold as steel," (Emma Harte's, our heroine--they're green--classic Mary Sue color--as is those of her granddaughter protege--those are "violet.") and loads of adverb, adjective and simile prose pile-ups and dizzying point of view shifts. I guess there's something to be said for getting engrossed in a trashy book, but I knew dozens, let alone hundreds of pages of this would drive me insane.

[avaavalon02 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Took awhile for me to get into it, so glad I kept reading. Love the Emma Harte books!