Why read The Profligate Son?

Book cover of The Profligate Son: Or, a True Story of Family Conflict, Fashionable Vice, and Financial Ruin in Regency England

Book description

In Regency England a profligate son was regarded as every parent's worst nightmare: he symbolized the dangerous temptations of a new consumer society and the failure of parents to instil moral, sexual, and financial self-control in their sons. This book tells the dramatic and moving story of one of those…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Profligate Son as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jonathan Harris

Author

This is the story of someone you will almost certainly never have heard of: William Jackson (1791-1828). His only claim to fame was his extraordinary capacity for getting into debt.

The son of an East India Company Tax Collector who had retired to Bath, England, William manifested his unenviable talent at a remarkably tender age, while still at school in fact, and passed most of his short life on the move, constantly pursued both by his creditors and by his stern and disapproving father.

I loved this book because it reads like a novel yet everything it describes really happened…

From Jonathan's 3 favorite reads in 2023.