Product Description

The great English courtesans and their glittering era, by the author of 'Daughters of Britannia'. During the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a small group of women rose from impoverished obscurity to positions of great power, independence and wealth. In doing so they took control of their lives -- and those of other people -- and made the world do their will. Men ruined themselves in desperate attempts to gain and retain a courtesan's favours, but she was always courted for far more than sex. In an age in which women were generally not well educated she was often unusually literate and literary, courted for her conversation as well as her physical company. Courtesans were extremely accomplished, and exerted a powerful influence as leaders of fashion and society. They were not received at Court, but inhabited their own parallel world -- the demi-monde -- complete with its own hierarchies, etiquette and protocol. They were queens of fashion, linguists, musicians, accomplished at political intrigue and, of course, possessors of great erotic gifts. Even to be seen in public with one of the great courtesans was a much-envied achievement. In Courtesans Katie Hickman, author of the bestselling Daughters of Britannia, focuses on the exceptional stories of five outstanding women. Sophia Baddeley, Elizabeth Armistead, Harriette Wilson, Cora Pearl and Catherine Walters may have had very different personalities and talents, but their lives exemplify the dazzling existence of the courtesan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #223069 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
Katie Hickman has done it again. The author of the bestselling Daughters of Britannia has produced another fascinating read in this biography of five stars of the demi-monde. Her period is 'the long nineteenth century', the 150 years which lie between her first courtesan, Sophia Baddeley, who died in 1786, and her last, Catherine Walters, who died in 1920. All were Englishwomen, but Cora Pearl, Hickman's fourth subject, also cut a swathe through masculine French society. Hickman gives several definitions of the word 'courtesan', the most interesting of which is that of 'the ultimate luxury good'. She maintains that the lives of these women were their art, and what masterpieces they were: high living, high society and reckless extravagance. (Sophia Baddeley once spent 700 pounds in an afternoon, the equivalent of #45,000 today, and that was just a beginning.) The courtesans' jewels, wardrobes, houses and stables were all legendary; they were the slightly shady celebrities of their era. People flocked to see them at the theatre or in Rotten Row, despite the fact that their way of life meant that they were forever excluded from 'respectable' circles. Courtesans were complex and courageous individuals. In their desire for autonomy they were very prepared to flout convention, and were gamblers at heart, for such freedom usually lasted only as long as their looks and youth did. There are some sad stories here, but also one very moving one, that of Charles James Fox, the Whig grandee, who formed a lasting and reciprocated attachment to the beautiful Elizabeth Armistead. That courtesans were pursued because of their expertise in the bedroom is a simplistic view: they were also valued for their intelligence, wit, charm, grace and style. We shall not see their like again. (Kirkus UK)

Sunday Times
'Good at conjuring up the sexual allure of the courtesan'

The Spectator
'Exuberant, elegantly crafted and engrossing.'

Customer Reviews

An excellent read, but....
I really enjoyed this book as an excellent read, but am not sure that I really agree with the author's (and some reviewers here) opinion that these women were independent, 'proto-feminists' who could be role models for us today. For all their beauty, glamour, money etc etc these women were, at heart, prostitutes, utterly dependant on men to whom they sold their bodies for money. Yes they maintained a kind of freedom in avoiding the patriarchal power of marriage, but they weren't any less defined by men, or any more able to construct their own lifestyles or self-identities, other than in what would be sexually-enticing for the men they needed to survive.

Most of them weren't married, not because they chose to be 'single', but because they weren't accepted in 'polite' society, an alienation which is played down quite a lot in the book. Similarly there's a lot of talk about their sexual independance, but while they were women who valued themselves, can someone be said to be independant when actually they are socially-ostracised, and have to sleep with men because that's their 'career' and only source of income?

It seems to me to be a little disturbing that there is a bit of trend for glamourising prostitution (Belle du Jour, for example, as a modern take on the same story), when beneath the money and the allure lies what appears to me to be a sad story of female victims dressing up their own dependancy as freedom.

Despite that (!), I did enjoy this book, in the way that I would enjoy a light novel, and there's undoubtedly a sense of survival about these women that is admirable. The shopping too is mouth-watering, but for all the women who raved about this for the 'independance' of the protagonists: be honest, is this really what we would want for our daughters?

A Delightful Romp
The book charts the lives of 5 women, who in this modern day would be classed as prostitutes, call girls, take your pick. They did indeed sell their favours for money, but these were not women of easy virtue, far from it. They had far more to offer to the men in their lives than mere sexual favours.

They were talented women, the fashion icons of their day. Intelligent and well read. Musicians and even linguists. Yes they were erotic, had the faces and the bodies that attracted men to them, but they were a far cry from the women who frequented taverns and the back streets of London selling their bodies to anyone and everyone who had a few coppers to spare.

These courtesans had an agenda and that agenda was to lure a rich patron into their web. Their attributes could help to give themselves a wonderful life. A life that they would probably never have experienced without the use of their feminine wiles and the gullibility and weakness of men.

Katie Hickman gives a compelling account of the lives of these five women. A glittering life that most people in the 18th and 19th century could normally only dream about.

18th Century Junkies Look no Further
If like me you've become an obsessive reader of books about 18th century figures then you will enjoy this book. The worlds of the 'ton' and the 'demi-monde' operated side and by side sometimes colliding disastrously and ocassionally successfully. Katie Hickman's book looks at the lives of four courtesans and their contemporaries with a modern eye but a keen understanding of the mores and givens of the time. You feel she really likes the women she portrays, warts and all, and excels at those gossipy details beloved of home historians like me. I used to want to be Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire but now I think Harriette Wilson, the 18th century's 'Material Girl' was having much more fun!