A Woman of Substance. Barbara Taylor Bradford

      

      BARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD

       A Woman of Substance

COPYRIGHT

      HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Granada Publishing 1980

      This paperback edition 2019

      Copyright © Barbara Taylor Bradford 1979

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019 Cover photograph © Sandra Cunningham/Trevillion Images

      Barbara Taylor Bradford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

      Source ISBN: 9780007321421

      Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007346943

      Version: 2019-12-05

PRAISE

      To discover more about Barbara’s books and sign up for her newsletter, visit www.barbarataylorbradford.co.uk

      ‘Memorable and moving … a sure-fire winner’

       Express

      ‘Queen of the genre’

       Sunday Times

      ‘Few novelists are as consummate as Barbara Taylor Bradford at keeping the reader turning the page. She is one of the best at spinning yarns’

       Guardian

      ‘The storyteller of substance’

       The Times

      ‘A sweeping saga full of passion and intrigue’

       Hello!

DEDICATION

      For Bob and my parents – who know the reason why

EPIGRAPH

      The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long, yet get little from life.

      Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

      – MONTAIGNE, Essays

      I have the heart of a man, not of a woman, and I am not afraid of anything …

      – ELIZABETH I, Queen of England

FOREWORD BY FERN BRITTON TO THE 40^TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

      Dear readers,

      I first encountered the force of nature that is Emma Harte when I raced through the pages of A Woman of Substance late into the night, many years ago. I was utterly gripped as I followed Emma’s journey from Yorkshire kitchen maid, pregnant, alone and friendless, to building her first Harte’s store – and then to becoming one of the most powerful women in the world, with a dynasty of her own.

      Many of you will also, like me, remember the wonderful Jenny Seagrove playing Emma in the television mini-series that held viewers spellbound, as we watched the determined servant girl striding over the Yorkshire moors with Liam Neeson as Blackie O’Neill at her side. Barbara has never left behind her love for her home county, and Yorkshire’s wild beauty fills this novel.

      Tough, uncompromising and always true to her Yorkshire roots, Emma Harte captivated the imagination of millions of readers. Her story is one of grit, ambition and determination; a woman staying true to her values and refusing to be bowed by the slings and arrows of fortune, bursting through the glass ceiling before it even had a name.

      Barbara created a heroine who has inspired women for the past four decades – inspired them to be courageous, break rules and follow their dreams. I hope you will enjoy discovering her story – or perhaps rediscovering – in this new edition, published to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of its first publication. There has never been a woman of substance quite like Emma Harte.

      Warmest wishes,

      Fern Britton

AUTHOR’S NOTE

      It was in 1976 that I had the glimmer of an idea for a novel. In actuality it was the image of a young girl, wrapped in a shawl and walking through the mist on the Yorkshire moors. I had no idea who she was, but I wanted to know more about her and quite suddenly I knew she would become a woman of some importance one day.

      For the next few days I thought about the girl of the moors, and as she grew flesh and became real to me I, in turn, filled with excitement. So much so that I knew I had to share her with my husband Bob. As a movie producer, he was used to listening to plots told to him by screenwriters and was a receptive listener. By the time I had told him the girl’s life story, improvising as I went along, he was genuinely sold on the novel, and as excited as I was. He told me to write an outline, which I did, and then we took it apart together and I rewrote it several times until we were sure it was everything I wanted it to be. My only worry was that it was somewhat parochial, since most of it played out in Yorkshire.

      But this did not bother Bob at all, who told me that it was the girl who was captivating, who the reader cared about – and that location was not all that important. Readers will become intrigued by her, will want to keep reading to see what happens to her, how she ends up.

      What I wanted was to tell a good tale about an enterprising woman, who makes it in a man’s world of business when women weren’t doing that. A woman who becomes a woman of substance.

      I suppose I succeeded more than I realised at the time. Emma Harte and her life story captured everybody’s imagination, and still does. Tough and often ruthless, brilliant when it came to dissimulation, she