The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack & The Extraordinary Story of Harris' List - Hardcover

Rubenhold, Hallie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0752428500 ISBN 13: 9780752428505

Publisher: Tempus, 2005

Synopsis

The Covent Garden Ladies tells the story of Samuel Derrick, Jack Harris, and Charlotte Hayes, whose complicated and colorful lives were brought together by the publication of Harris' List, an infamous guidebook of prostitutes which detailed addresses, physical characteristics and "specialties." The true history of the book is a tragicomicedy motivated by poverty, passionate love, aspiration, and shame. Its telling plunges the reader down the dark alleys of 18th-century London's underworld, a realm populated by tavern owners, pimps, punters, card sharps, and of course, a colorful range of prostitutes and brothel-keepers.

About this title

About the Author

Hallie Rubenhold was born in Los Angeles to English parents, studied history and the history of art the University of Leeds where she received her MA and MPhil in eighteenth-century British social history. She has edited a facsimile of an edition of Harris's List (also published by Tempus) and is currently writing Lady Worsley's Whim: The Divorce that Scandalised Georgian England. She worked as the Assistant Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, London before deciding to teach history and write full-time. She lives in Muswell Hill, London.

Review

Sex toys, porn... forget Ann Summers, Miss Love was at it 250 years ago. * THE TIMES * What a marvellous read Covent Garden Ladies is - I absolutely loved these divinely irresistible rascals and the brilliant telling of their escapades. -- LEONIE FRIEDA * Author of Catherine De Medici * Scrupulously researched and cleverly structured... as lewd as goats and monkeys. -- FREYA JOHNSTON * THE DAILY TELEGRAPH * A compelling and ingenious book... Rubenhold proves herself both a keen researcher and a writer who understands narrative tension. * THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY * Exposed: filthy poet pimp who wrote the Georgian gentleman's guide to prostitution... Essential reading for Georgian gentlemen in search of dangerous liaisons. * THE GUARDIAN * The Covent Garden Ladies has all the atmosphere and edge of a good novel combined with the erudition and scholarship of history at its best... gives us the eighteenth century underworld as it is rarely portrayed, complete with whores and whoremongers, pimps and publishers. With this magnificent debut, Hallie Rubenhold deserves to storm the literary world. -- FRANCES WILSON * Author of The Courtesan's Revenge *

Edition details

• Publisher: Tempus
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0752428500
• ISBN 13: 9780752428505
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 318