Item Condition: Used; Good
Dust cover torn. Otherwise, very good.
Among the great personalities and
eccentrics of nineteenth century Eng-
land one small giddy shade is still
not with
honour. Harriette Wilson was the most
celebrated courtesan of the Regency.
Her life was deplorablebut how
readable ! She has left us her Memoirs,
written in middle-age, when fallen from
favour, swept aside by the clean, new
hard-
pressed for money, she decided to
publish the most startling recollections
of her noble circle. Sz00 was her price
for silence, and half that 'gay world
with which she lived at hack and
manger, as Sir Walter Scott noted it,
paid up, and felt the money well spent.
Some braved it out-the Duke of
Welington among them. Publish and be
damned was his reply. The Memoirs ran
into hundreds of editions, and as cach
instalment appeared, the publishers had
to barricade themselves against the
recalled with
delight if
broom of
Victorianism
and
storming mobs.