Hi! I’m Nancy Rubin Stuart

I’m an award-winning author of books about women and the world around them. 

You can read about these important but often-neglected heroines in my books on this site.

My latest work is POOR RICHARD’S WOMEN which received glowing reviews when it was published in 2022. Watch for the paperback publication in March 2023!  

Think you know everything about the famous scientist and founding father Benjamin Franklin? Think again. Probably not about Franklin’s wife and the other women he loved and lost!

Poor Richard’s Women

Deborah Read Franklin
and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father

Poor Richard’s Women brings to life the voices of those who loved, nurtured and defended Ben as he struggled privately with passion and prudence.

In these pages, readers will discover Deborah Read Franklin, his common-law wife and partner for forty-four years, as well as his four other romantic attachments. 

Attractive, charming and independent, these women reveal a very different Franklin than the founding father described in history books.

Follow this link to listen to an interview with the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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“In this scrupulously documented biography, historian Stuart examines primary sources through a feminist lens… Stuart has an engaging style and weaves in significant historical context.”
Booklist
“Stuart’s new women’s history is an engrossing look at the human side of Benjamin Franklin… For lovers of biography, American history, and women’s studies. This is a terrific read: poignant, provocative, and probing.”
Library Journal
“A readable, well-researched book… A revealing document about early American history.”
Kirkus Reviews
“A fresh perspective on Benjamin Franklin… American history buffs will be fascinated.”
Publisher’s Weekly

About the Author

Born in Boston, Nancy graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in English and an M.A.T. from Brown University. In 1995, Mount Vernon College, now part of Georgetown University, awarded her an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters. 

While raising children, Nancy wrote for the New York Times under the byline Nancy Rubin. That work and her experiences as a suburban wife and mother prompted her first book, The New Suburban Woman: Beyond Myth and Motherhood.

Subsequent books under that byline were The Mother Mirror: How a Generation of Women Is Changing Motherhood in America;  Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen, and the best-selling American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post.

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Earlier Books by Nancy Rubin Stuart

“I write to illuminate the forgotten lives of women
who have made significant contributions to our world.”

See all of Nancy’s books on the Bookshelf page.