The Great Swindle: The Story of the South Sea Bubble
About this ebook
Here, in minute detail, Cowles charts both the Mississippi Bubble in France and the South Sea Bubble in England, as speculators and manipulators sold the public from the royal house down on a new way to absorb the gigantic national debts. That the promised dividends were to come out of non-existent resources and funds—backed by the presumed integrity of those who launched the scheme—was branded by Robert Walpole as "evil of the first magnitude." Here was the initial "stock market swindle" in history, which spread to the launching of lesser swindles and highlighted the depravity of the age.
A fascinating historical read.
Illustrated throughout with portrait paintings.
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About the author
(Harriet) Virginia Spencer Cowles OBE (August 24, 1910 - September 17, 1983) was a noted American journalist, biographer, and travel writer.
Born in in Brattleboro, Vermont, she began her journalism career in the 1930s, first working on the gossip columns of Boston and New York newspapers, writing mainly about fashion, love and society, before becoming a foreign war correspondent in Spain in 1936. Reporting on the Spanish Civil War for the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, and Hearst newspapers, she garnered attention with her notably different coverage, determined to cover the war from both sides
After leaving Spain, Cowles reported from all over Europe, travelling between Russia, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Finland, and France during 1939 and 1940. For the Sunday Times, she reported on the Winter War, before returning to England in 1940 after the fall of France. She witnessed the first day of The Blitz, and continued to report on the Battle of Britain throughout, writing from Dover how "You knew the fate of civilization was being decided fifteen thousand feet above your head in a world of sun, wind and sky".
From 1942-1943 she worked for the American Ambassador in London and reported on the North African Campaign for the Sunday Times and Chicago Sun. She returned to reporting full-time, from Italy and France, in 1944-1945.
Cowles' first book, published in early 1941, Looking For Trouble, details both her experiences in the war, and the small community of foreign war correspondents, including Hemingway and Gelhorn, as well as conveying her belief that America should enter World War II.
Over the following four decades, Cowles published a long series of critically acclaimed political, individual and family biographies.
She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1947 for her service as a war correspondent.
In 1983, while traveling with her husband, she was killed in an automobile accident. She was 73.
