- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: William Morrow & Company; First Edition edition (Dec 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0066209552
- ISBN-13: 978-0066209555
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 346,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Praise for Daughters of Britannia:
‘This is a delightful and exceptionally well-written book, funny, lively and warm-hearted.’
Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph
‘This is a lovely book: affectionate, celebratory and as conscious of the glory as the hardship. These women lived; they saw dolphins in the Bosphorous at dawn, took tea with empresses, watched eclipses in Turkistan. And they were so lonely that they wrote it all down.’
Libby Purves, Sunday Times
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.
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First Sentence
'WE NOW BEGAN to think of the masquerade,' wrote Eliza Steele comfortably in her long and gossipy memoir of the life of Sophia Baddeley, and we settled it that Mrs Baddeley should go in the character of Juliet, and I in that of the Nurse. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
'WE NOW BEGAN to think of the masquerade,' wrote Eliza Steele comfortably in her long and gossipy memoir of the life of Sophia Baddeley, and we settled it that Mrs Baddeley should go in the character of Juliet, and I in that of the Nurse. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When i first saw the book, the courtesans, i was intrigued, i have never read a biography and it was my aim to read one. I was looking up a number of different biographies but this one was the only one which stuck out as at all appealing. My first thought was moulin rouge as it is my favourite film and the whole courtesan eroticism and powerful female protagonist sprang to mind, and when i was reading it i was correct in thinking that it was going to be in such a way. It gave me a feeling of sucess within women and i thought it was an incredably comparitable biography once i read up the background of the women of this time afterwards. What i disliked about the biography was that i felt sorry for men and their one track minds which are displayed, but as this is the truth it helped the information to be in its truest possible form. I understand it must be hard to write about something which is true but not experienced by yourself but she has managed to portray the lives of the five women in a way which seems as if she was experiencing it with them. thankyou for a fabulous read! I am now into biographies and have read more modern biographies since.
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