Academic - Scholarly - Primary Sources - Eighteenth-Century History - Women's History - Women's Studies; Autobiographies and biographies of courtesans, directories of whores, erotic poems dedicated to harlots, jocular descriptions of prostitutes and jests books on strumpets are invaluable primary sources for the serious scholar involved in the study of sexuality. This new edition brings together an assortment of well-chosen primary material which offers scholars easy access to as yet underused resources. The first set of volumes contain biographies of well-known whores from the first half of the eighteenth century. Written by hacks for a rakish male audience, they include the ups and downs of these women of the town in vibrant and alluring accounts. The volumes in the second set focus on the genre of courtesans' autobiographies, on the little-known memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Julia Johnstone and Mrs Leeson. These autobiographies express the views of the women themselves: what they thought of their paramours; the sexual double standard; their jealousies; their friends; of chastity and infidelity. They include descriptions about some of the leading well-known figures of the day.
The collection also includes the smaller biographies of eighteenth-century whores such as Sally Dawson, Phoebe Phillips, Fanny Davies and Nancy Dawson.