- Paperback: 480 pages
- Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; New edition edition (9 Jan 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1842126326
- ISBN-13: 978-1842126325
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14.2 x 4.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 720,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Nineteenth century London produced a fine flowering of eccentrics and individualists. Chief among them was Harriette Wilson, whose patrons included most of the distinguished men of the day, from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Byron. She held court in a box at the opera, attended by statesmen, poets, national heroes, aristocrats, members of the beau monde, and students who hoped to be immortalised by her glance. She wrote these memoirs in middle age, when she had fallen out of favour. She advised her former lovers that for 200 she would edit them out. 'Publish and be damned!' retorted the Duke of Wellington. The result is an elegant, zestful, unrepentant memoir, which offers intimately detailed portraits of the Regency demimonde. First published in 1957.
From the Back Cover
Harriette Wilson's Memoirs These are the memoirs of the reigning courtesan of Regency London whose patrons included most of the distinguished men of her day, from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Byron. Hard-pressed for money in middle age, she sold her memoirs after offering to edit out any lovers who paid her the sum of 200 Publish and be damned! cried the Duke of Wellington. She did and she was. Edited and Introduced by Lesley Blanch, author of The Wilder Shores of Love.
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THE NINETEENTH CENTURY was an age of great personalities, a last splendid flowering before twentieth-century anonymity and mass living engulfed them in its drab tide. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY was an age of great personalities, a last splendid flowering before twentieth-century anonymity and mass living engulfed them in its drab tide. 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
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The introduction to the memoires gives a good overall picture of Regency life and the place of the courtesan. This is nothing however compared to the actual memoires - they are revealing, enjoyable, and rather like reading a Regency issue of a 'Hello' type magazine. Harriette is very open, rather sweet and at times just a little too humble. She paints a picture of the courtesan life which shows just how open their role was, and yet how much they lived in a parallel world to that of the real Regency folk of the Ton.
Format:Paperback
This is a lovely book written by a lovely, articulate woman who both took advantage of her age and was taken advantage of by it. The editor provides an insightful amount of front matter tying together some social, political and sociological information to give a setting for Harriette's story. I write Regency romances, and this material was wonderfully helpful in providing insights into the age, and particularly into the wealthy, titled men fortunate enough to thrive in it and know Harriette. The book was also an interesting portrait of the difference between a woman who was purposefully attractive on many levels--a true courtesan--and what modern women do with their gender role. It should also be noted that Harriette manages to prose on at great length without ever once lapsing into the truly intimate. She hints, she innuendos (spending time with the Duke of Wellington was described as "very uphill work,") but she never quite opens the bedroom door. A lovely, lovely book.
Grace Burrowes
Grace Burrowes
Format:Paperback
Harriette Wilson is notoriously the woman of pleasure who blackmailed her former lovers - if they paid up they avoided detailed mention in her memoirs. The Duke of Wellington had no truck with this - his memorable response, "Publish and be damned!" is nowadays more famous than the book and woman who inspired it.
This edition was published and edited in the late fifties and it shows. The lengthy introduction reveals quite a moralistic attitude, with no consideration of the sort a modern feminist might give, of the world of women "of that kind" and the options available to them. It also takes for granted a rather more detailed knowledge of French courtesans like La Paiva and Edwardian demi-reps than is actually likely today.
Harriette's memoirs are lively and clearly utterly unreliable, but enormous fun for anyone who knows their way round the history and literature of the period or, for that matter, is a Georgette Heyer fan! My advice is to skip the introduction and dive straight into the world of this silly, outrageous "Tart with a heart" of two centuries ago, which, as another reviewer says, could almost be culled from the pages of a modern celebrity scandal magazine.
This edition was published and edited in the late fifties and it shows. The lengthy introduction reveals quite a moralistic attitude, with no consideration of the sort a modern feminist might give, of the world of women "of that kind" and the options available to them. It also takes for granted a rather more detailed knowledge of French courtesans like La Paiva and Edwardian demi-reps than is actually likely today.
Harriette's memoirs are lively and clearly utterly unreliable, but enormous fun for anyone who knows their way round the history and literature of the period or, for that matter, is a Georgette Heyer fan! My advice is to skip the introduction and dive straight into the world of this silly, outrageous "Tart with a heart" of two centuries ago, which, as another reviewer says, could almost be culled from the pages of a modern celebrity scandal magazine.
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