Poor Man at the Gates Books in Order
Part ofAndrew Wareham Books in OrderExplore the Poor Man at the Gates books by Andrew Wareham in order, with summaries, background, and a guide to the Andrews and Star saga.
Last updated: June 11, 2026
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Publication Order
14 books
The Privateersman
by Andrew Wareham
2013
Tom Andrews escapes the hangman, joins a privateering ship, and makes illicit money in the Revolutionary Atlantic. Betrayal sends him home to industrial England, where fortune may buy a future.
Born To Privilege
by Andrew Wareham
2014
The next stage of the Andrews and Star rise brings children, marriages, and the hunger for status. Wealth buys choices, but birth still shapes how others judge them.
Illusions Of Change
by Andrew Wareham
2014
Change sweeps through industry and politics, but old class habits remain stubborn. The family saga follows people trying to adapt without losing the power they have built.
Nouveau Riche
by Andrew Wareham
2014
Tom Andrews and Joseph Star return to England with money and sharp ambitions. Industrial Lancashire offers fortunes, but old society does not welcome new men without making them pay.
Privilege Preserved
by Andrew Wareham
2014
The Andrews and Star families work to preserve the position they have fought to win. Wealth, land, and family discipline become tools against a society waiting for them to stumble.
The Old Order
by Andrew Wareham
2014
The old social order resists the industrial world rising around it. The Andrews and Star families must judge when to challenge tradition and when to profit quietly from it.
The Pain Of Privilege
by Andrew Wareham
2014
Privilege brings comfort and new kinds of pain for the rising families. Estates, alliances, and reputation test whether money can protect the people who inherit it.
The Wages Of Virtue
by Andrew Wareham
2014
Virtue has a cost in Wareham’s industrial Britain. Family duty, public morality, and private interest all collide as the Andrews and Star dynasties keep consolidating power.
A Parade Of Virtue
by Andrew Wareham
2015
The Andrews and Star families continue their climb through money, marriage, and public respectability. Virtue is useful in society, but Wareham’s industrial world always asks who can afford it.
The Vice Of Virtue
by Andrew Wareham
2015
Respectability creates its own temptations for the rising families. As wealth grows, moral display, private appetite, and social ambition make virtue less simple than it looks.
Virtue's Reward
by Andrew Wareham
2015
The families find that public virtue can bring rewards, but never without strings. Industrial money, family calculation, and social acceptance continue to shape the next generation.
Victorian Dawn
by Andrew Wareham
2016
As the Victorian age begins, the Andrews and Star families face new versions of old problems. Hunger, unrest, crowded cities, and disease test wealth that cannot buy complete safety.
A Victorian World
by Andrew Wareham
2022
The Andrews family faces disaster and recovery as the 1840s open a world of steam, empire, and stricter public morality. The old Hanoverian age fades, but old problems remain.
A Victorian Empire
by Andrew Wareham
2023
The Andrews and Star families move deeper into the age of empire, industry, and Victorian confidence. Their wealth gives them reach, but history keeps testing the foundations of their power.
Series background & context
Poor Man at the Gates is Wareham’s long industrial and family saga. It begins with Tom Andrews, a petty smuggler who escapes danger in England, finds his way onto a privateering ship, and later makes money in New York during the Revolutionary War.
Tom’s key companion is Joseph Star, a part-Carib freed slave. After betrayal forces them back to England, the two settle in industrial Lancashire, where iron, mines, cotton, and nerve can turn outsiders into rich men. Their methods are not gentle. Their ambitions are large.
Money opens doors, but not all of them.
The series follows Tom, Joseph, their families, and their allies as they try to build dynasties powerful enough to stand beside old aristocratic houses. Wareham is very interested in the awkward space between wealth and acceptance. Buying land is possible. Being treated as a gentleman is harder. Keeping children, marriages, factories, and reputations in order may be harder still.
The books range from the late eighteenth century into the Victorian era. Industrial change, class anxiety, politics, food prices, disease, crowded cities, and social unrest all press against the family story. Later books show the Andrews and Star families moving into a world of steam, empire, and public respectability, while old problems keep returning in new clothes.
This is one of the best places to start if you want Wareham at his broadest. Read The Privateersman first, then Nouveau Riche and Born To Privilege. The full series is long, but it rewards reading in order because fortunes, marriages, grudges, and family positions build over generations.
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