Author: Frances Wilson
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9780571205240
Category : Courtesans
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Get Book Here
Book Description
Harriette Wilson was the most desired and the most dangerous woman in Regency London. This highly acclaimed biography reveals for the first time the true story behind her sensational life and scandalous 'Memoirs'. When her former lovers - including much of the British aristocracy - turned against her, she knew exactly how to take revenge . . . 'A wonderful book. Much more than a biography of one attractive, witty woman, it offers a deft analysis of how Britain dealt with celebrity, sex, power and popular journalism in an age that bears remarkable similarities to our own . . . Frances Wilson is not only a first-rate scholar but also a wonderful storyteller who manages to get inside her namesake's famously creamy skin and tell her story with wit and understanding.' Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday 'Lively and stylish . . . Reveals how dangerous the courtesan who operated at the heart of the political world was thought to be.' Anne Sebba, Spectator 'Harriette's story is deftly and stylishly told. It beats most novels with its rich ingredients.' Frances Spalding, Daily Mail
Author: Harriette Wilson
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781987518733
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 506
Get Book Here
Book Description
"The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson", Harriette Wilson. Harriette Wilson was a celebrated British Regency courtesan (1786-1845).
Author: Rachel Mesch
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 9780826515315
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Get Book Here
Book Description
Brings into relief a critical relationship between the female mind and body that is essential to understanding the discursive position of the turn-of-the-century woman writer. This book includes novels that confront this mind/body problem through a wide variety of styles and genres that challenge conventional fin-de-siecle notions of femininity.
Author: Susan Griffin
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504012194
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Get Book Here
Book Description
A masterwork of feminist ideology, brilliantly exposing pornography as the antithesis of free expression and the enemy of liberty In this powerful and devastating critique, poet, philosopher, and feminist Susan Griffin exposes the inherent psychological horrors of pornography. Griffin argues that, rather than encouraging expression, pornographic images and the philosophies that support them actually stifle freedoms through the dehumanization, subjugation, and degradation of female subjects. The pornographic mindset, Griffin contends, is akin to racism in that it causes dangerous schisms in society and promotes sexual regression, fear, and hatred. This violent rift in Western culture is explored by examining the lives of six notable individuals across two centuries: Franz Marc, the Marquis de Sade, Kate Chopin, Lawrence Singleton, Anne Frank, and Marilyn Monroe. The result is an extraordinary new approach to evaluating sexual health and the parameters of erotic imagination. Griffin reveals pornography as “not a love of the life of the body, but a fear of bodily knowledge, and a desire to silence Eros.”
Author: Sarah Dunant
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588365506
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Get Book Here
Book Description
My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman Emperor’s army blew a hole in the wall of God’s eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment. Thus begins In the Company of the Courtesan, Sarah Dunant’s epic novel of life in Renaissance Italy. Escaping the sack of Rome in 1527, with their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed, the courtesan Fiammetta and her dwarf companion, Bucino, head for Venice, the shimmering city born out of water to become a miracle of east-west trade: rich and rancid, pious and profitable, beautiful and squalid. With a mix of courage and cunning they infiltrate Venetian society. Together they make the perfect partnership: the sharp-tongued, sharp-witted dwarf, and his vibrant mistress, trained from birth to charm, entertain, and satisfy men who have the money to support her. Yet as their fortunes rise, this perfect partnership comes under threat, from the searing passion of a lover who wants more than his allotted nights to the attentions of an admiring Turk in search of human novelties for his sultan’s court. But Fiammetta and Bucino’s greatest challenge comes from a young crippled woman, a blind healer who insinuates herself into their lives and hearts with devastating consequences for them all. A story of desire and deception, sin and religion, loyalty and friendship, In the Company of the Courtesan paints a portrait of one of the world’s greatest cities at its most potent moment in history: It is a picture that remains vivid long after the final page.
Author: Barbara White
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752493884
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Get Book Here
Book Description
Fanny Murray was an incomparable Georgian beauty and the most desired courtesan of the 1750s. The daughter of an impoverished musician from Bath, she took London society by storm, not only as the most prized 'purchaseable beauty' of her day, but also as a fashion icon and muse to poets, writers and artists. She counted princes, aristocrats and politicians among her friends and lovers, but relished the company of rogues, fraudsters and ne'er-do-wells. Barbara White presents evidence to suggest that Fanny Murray participated spiritedly in the sexual antics of the notorious 'Monks of Medmenham', the most infamous of the Hell-fire Clubs. After she retired from prostitution, Fanny Murray reinvented herself, entering a pragmatic marriage with the Scottish actor David Ross. Surprisingly, her virtues as a devoted and faithful wife became almost proverbial. Even so, Murray could not escape her disreputable past. In 1763, a scurrilous poem dedicated to her caused a national scandal that ended in the infamous trial of the radical politician John Wilkes for obscene libel. Barbara White's portrait of Fanny Murray takes readers from the brothels of Covent Garden to sex romps at Medmenham Abbey, from refined drawing rooms in London to marital respectability in Edinburgh. This is an illuminating contribution to the scholarly understanding and popular appreciation of a complex and intriguing period of British history. Fanny Murray's triumph – against almost insuperable odds – is a remarkable story, as rich in the telling as it is enthralling.
Author: Courtney Milan
Publisher: Courtney Milan
ISBN: 1937248739
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Get Book Here
Book Description
Jessica Farleigh is desperate. She’s a courtesan, and when she’s asked to seduce Sir Mark and destroy his good name in exchange for enough money to solve all her problems, she agrees. There is, after all, no such thing as a good man, and she should know. She’s known men all her life. Sir Mark Turner wrote the book on male chastity—literally—and made a name for himself as an upright moralist. But he’s also a romantic, and he’s been waiting for the right woman to share his life, his heart, and yes, his bed. Jessica can’t fall in love with him. She can’t let herself respect him. And by the time she realizes she’s in love with him, it’s too late. The only way to win the freedom she needs is to destroy the most honorable man she’s ever met. Note: This book was originally released in 2011. This is a rerelease with an added epilogue.
Author: Virginia Rounding
Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA
ISBN: 1582344507
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
Unraveling myth from reality, this intriguing study goes inside the boudoir to reveal the real-life world of the legendary French courtesans of the nineteenth century, describing the reputations and influence of Marie Duplessis, Cora Pearl, La Pava, and Apollonie Sabatier, La Prsidente. Reprint.
Author: Ruth Vanita
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501334425
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Get Book Here
Book Description
Indian cinema is the only body of world cinema that depicts courtesans as important characters. In early films courtesan characters transmitted Indian classical dance, music and aesthetics to large audiences. They represent the nation's past, tracing their heritage to the fourth-century Kamasutra and to nineteenth-century courtly cultures, but they are also the first group of modern women in Hindi films. They are working professionals living on their own or in matrilineal families. Like male protagonists, they travel widely and develop networks of friends and chosen kin. They have relations with men outside marriage and become single mothers. Courtesan films are heroine-oriented and almost every major female actor has played this role. Challenging received wisdom, Vanita demonstrates that a larger number of courtesans in Bombay cinema are Hindu and indeterminate than are Muslim, and that films depict their culture as hybrid Hindu-Muslim, not Islamicate. Courtesans speak in the ambiguous voice of the modern nation, inviting spectators to seize pleasure here and now but also to search for the meaning of life. Vanita's groundbreaking study of courtesans and courtesan imagery in 235 films brings fresh evidence to show that the courtesan figure shapes the modern Indian erotic, political and religious imagination.
Author: Lesley Downer
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593057937
Category : Courtesans
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Get Book Here
Book Description
Japan, 1868: the last shogun has been defeated, the age of the emperors is about to begin and in Japan's frozen north a diehard band of loyalists plans a desperate last stand.
