Courtesans

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.

Katie Hickman was born into a diplomatic family and has spent more than twenty-five years living abroad in Europe, the Far East and Latin America. She is the author of four previous books: the bestselling Daughters of Britannia: the Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives; A Trip to the Light Fantastic (reissued as Travels With A Circus), which was one of the Independent's 1993 Books of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; The Quetzal Summer, a novel set in the Andes, for which she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award; and Dreams of the Peaceful Dragon: A Journey into Bhutan. She is featured in the Oxford University Press guide to women travellers, Wayward Women.

'A world of glamour and seduction, high spending and intrigue.' Daily Mail 'A gleeful romp through the 18th- and 19th-century demi-monde. Hickman excels at gossipy detail.' Sunday Telegraph 'Irresistible...history at its most human. Elegant and addictively readable.' William Dalrymple