Download or read book Queen of the Courtesans written by Barbara White and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fanny Murray was an incomparable Georgian beauty and the most desired courtesan of the 1750s. The daughter of an impoverished musician from Bath, she took London society by storm, not only as the most prized 'purchaseable beauty' of her day, but also as a fashion icon and muse to poets, writers and artists. She counted princes, aristocrats and politicians among her friends and lovers, but relished the company of rogues, fraudsters and ne'er-do-wells. Barbara White presents evidence to suggest that Fanny Murray participated spiritedly in the sexual antics of the notorious 'Monks of Medmenham', the most infamous of the Hell-fire Clubs. After she retired from prostitution, Fanny Murray reinvented herself, entering a pragmatic marriage with the Scottish actor David Ross. Surprisingly, her virtues as a devoted and faithful wife became almost proverbial. Even so, Murray could not escape her disreputable past. In 1763, a scurrilous poem dedicated to her caused a national scandal that ended in the infamous trial of the radical politician John Wilkes for obscene libel. Barbara White's portrait of Fanny Murray takes readers from the brothels of Covent Garden to sex romps at Medmenham Abbey, from refined drawing rooms in London to marital respectability in Edinburgh. This is an illuminating contribution to the scholarly understanding and popular appreciation of a complex and intriguing period of British history. Fanny Murray's triumph – against almost insuperable odds – is a remarkable story, as rich in the telling as it is enthralling.
Download or read book The Book of the Courtesans written by Susan Griffin and published by Crown. This book was released on 2002-02-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer-Prize-nominated author Susan Griffin comes an unprecedented, provocative look at the dazzling world of the West’s first independent women, whose lively liaisons brought them unspoken influence, wealth, and freedom. While they charmed some of Europe’s most illustrious men honing their social skills as well as their sexual ones, the great courtesans gained riches, power, education, and sexual freedom in a time when other women were denied all of these. From Imperia of sixteenth-century Rome, who personified the Renaissance ideal of beauty; Mme. de Pompadour, the arbiter of all things fashionable in eighteenth-century Paris and Versailles; Liane de Pougy, known in France during the Belle Epoque as “Our National Courtesan”; to Sarah Bernhardt, who, following in her mother’s footsteps, supported herself in her early career with a second profession, The Book of the Courtesans tells the life stories and intricacies of the lavish lifestyles of these women. Unlike their geisha counterparts, courtesans neither lived in brothels nor bent their wills to suit their suitors. They were strong- willed, autonomous, and plucky. An open secret, their presence can be felt throughout our culture. The muses who enflamed the hearts and imaginations of our most celebrated artists, they were also artists in their own right. They wrote poetry and novels, invented the cancan at the Moulin Rouge, and presented celebrated acts at the Folies Bergères. They helped to influence and shape the sensibility of modern literature, painting, and fashion. When Greek sculptor Praxiteles wanted to depict Venus he used a famous courtesan as a model, as in later centuries Titian, Veronese, Raphael, Giorgione, and Boucher did when they painted goddesses. When Marcel Proust was a young man it was the courtesan Laure Hayman who took him under her wing, introducing him to the right people, and providing inspiration for one of literature’s greatest masterpieces. And they often had considerable political influence too. When King Louis XV needed advice on foreign affairs or appointments of state he turned to Jeanne du Barry as well as Pompadour. In her witty and insightful prose, as Griffin celebrates these alluring and fascinating women, she restores a lost legacy of women’s history. She gives us the stories of these amazing women who, starting from impoverished or unimpressive beginnings, garnered chateaux, fine coaches, fabulous collections of jewelry, and even aristocratic titles along the way. And through a brilliant exploration of their extraordinary abilities, skills, and talents which Griffin playfully categorizes as their virtues "Timing, Beauty, Cheek, Brilliance, Gaiety, Grace, and Charm" her book explains how, while helping themselves, through their often outrageous, always entertaining examples, the great courtesans not only enriched our cultural heritage but helped to liberate women from the social, sexual, and economic strictures that confined them. Intensively researched and beautifully crafted, The Book of the Courtesans delves into scintillating but often hidden worlds, telling stories gleaned from many sources, including courtesans’ memoirs, presented along with stunning rare photographs to create memorable portraits of some of the most pivotal figures in women’s history.
Download or read book The Courtesan written by Susan Carroll and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2005-07-26 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skilled in passion, artful in deception, and driven by betrayal, she is the glittering center of the royal court–but the most desired woman of Renaissance France will draw the wrath of a dangerous adversary. Paris, 1575. The consort of some of Europe’s most influential men, Gabrielle Cheney is determined to secure her future by winning the heart of Henry, the Huguenot king of Navarre. As his mistress, Gabrielle hopes she might one day become the power behind the French throne. But her plans are jeopardized by Captain Nicolas Rémy, a devoted warrior whose love Gabrielle desires–and fears–above all. She will also incur the malevolence of the Dark Queen, Catherine de’ Medici, whose spies and witch-hunters are legion, and who will summon the black arts to maintain her authority. With the lives of those she loves in peril, Gabrielle must rebel against her queen to fulfill a glorious destiny she has sacrificed everything to gain. Alive with vivid period detail and characters as vibrant as they are memorable, The Courtesan is a sweeping historical tale of dangerous intrigues, deep treachery, and one woman’s unshakable resolve to honor her heart.
Download or read book Courtesans and Fishcakes written by James N. Davidson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As any reader of the Symposium knows, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates conversed over lavish banquets, kept watch on who was eating too much fish, and imbibed liberally without ever getting drunk. In other words, James Davidson writes, he reflected the culture of ancient Greece in which he lived, a culture of passions and pleasures, of food, drink, and sex before—and in concert with—politics and principles. Athenians, the richest and most powerful of the Greeks, were as skilled at consuming as their playwrights were at devising tragedies. Weaving together Greek texts, critical theory, and witty anecdotes, this compelling and accessible study teaches the reader a great deal, not only about the banquets and temptations of ancient Athens, but also about how to read Greek comedy and history.
Download or read book Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth century Paris written by comtesse Cäleste Vänard de Chabrillan and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Cäleste Mogador's memoirs were first published in 1854 and again in 1858, they were immediately seized and condemned as immoral and unsuitable for public consumption. For a reader in our more forgiving times, this extraordinary document offers not only a portrait of the early life of an intelligent, courageous, and infinitely intriguing Frenchwoman but also an exceedingly rare inside look at the world of the courtesans and prostitutes of nineteenth-century France. ø Writing to conciliate judges and creditors, Mogador (born Cäleste Venard in 1824) explains how with tenacity, wit, and audacity, she managed to escape a difficult childhood and subsequent life of prostitution to become, successively, a darling of the dance halls, a circus rider, and an actress, all the while attracting wealthy young men who vied for her favor. Although her account gives readers a peek into the rakish demimonde made famous by Verdi's opera La Traviata, its greatest value lies in its candid picture of a spunky, self-educated woman who doggedly transformed herself into an esteemed and prolific novelist and playwright, who fell in love with a count and married him, and who made her name synonymous with the bohemian life of the 1840s and 1850s in Paris.
Download or read book In the Company of the Courtesan written by Sarah Dunant and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman Emperor’s army blew a hole in the wall of God’s eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment. Thus begins In the Company of the Courtesan, Sarah Dunant’s epic novel of life in Renaissance Italy. Escaping the sack of Rome in 1527, with their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed, the courtesan Fiammetta and her dwarf companion, Bucino, head for Venice, the shimmering city born out of water to become a miracle of east-west trade: rich and rancid, pious and profitable, beautiful and squalid. With a mix of courage and cunning they infiltrate Venetian society. Together they make the perfect partnership: the sharp-tongued, sharp-witted dwarf, and his vibrant mistress, trained from birth to charm, entertain, and satisfy men who have the money to support her. Yet as their fortunes rise, this perfect partnership comes under threat, from the searing passion of a lover who wants more than his allotted nights to the attentions of an admiring Turk in search of human novelties for his sultan’s court. But Fiammetta and Bucino’s greatest challenge comes from a young crippled woman, a blind healer who insinuates herself into their lives and hearts with devastating consequences for them all. A story of desire and deception, sin and religion, loyalty and friendship, In the Company of the Courtesan paints a portrait of one of the world’s greatest cities at its most potent moment in history: It is a picture that remains vivid long after the final page.
Download or read book The Queen Of The Night written by Alexander Chee and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER, New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and a Best Book of the Year from NPR, Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, and others. The mesmerizing story of one woman's rise from circus rider to courtesan to world-renowned diva—"a brilliant performance" (Washington Post). The Queen of the Night tells the captivating story of Lilliet Berne, an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept into the glamour and terror of Second Empire France. She became a sensation of the Paris Opera, with every accolade but an original role—her chance at immortality. When one is offered to her, she finds the libretto is based on her deepest secret, something only four people have ever known. But who betrayed her? With epic sweep, gorgeous language, and haunting details, Alexander Chee shares Lilliet’s cunning transformation from circus rider to courtesan to legendary soprano, retracing the path that led to the role that could secure her reputation—or destroy her with the secrets it reveals. “It just sounds terrific. It sounds like opera.”—The New Yorker “Sprawling, soaring, bawdy, and plotted like a fine embroidery.”—NPR
Download or read book The Courtesan Queen written by Anna Triss and published by Warm Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After centuries of peace, the four Elemental Clans of Symbiosis are at war with each other. Sylvan, the young Fuegis King, a cruel and ruthless warrior with the ability to control Fire magic, is enslaving the other three kingdoms of Symbiosis, spreading death and terror in his path. I am Queen Alena of the Glace Clan, which is affiliated with Water magic. I was captured by my worst enemy during the siege of my city. I already know the fate that awaits me tonight. Like the princesses of the other two Elemental Clans that preceded me, I am destined to become the new wife of the tyrant Sylvan. And tomorrow at dawn… I will be executed. But queen or slave, I am first and foremost a Glace. I will honor our ancestral philosophy. “Facing his enemy, a Glace sheds no tears, and never gives up wielding his weapons.”
Download or read book The Hundredth Queen written by Emily R. King and published by . This book was released on 2017-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Emily R. King's thrilling fantasy debut, an orphan girl blossoms into a warrior, summoning courage and confidence in her fearless quest to upend tradition, overthrow an empire, and reclaim her life as her own.As an orphan ward of the Sisterhood in the ancient Tarachand Empire, eighteen-year-old Kalinda is destined for nothing more than a life of seclusion and prayer. Plagued by fevers, she's an unlikely candidate for even a servant's position, let alone a courtesan or wife. Her sole dream is to continue living in peace in the Sisterhood's mountain temple.But a visit from the tyrant Rajah Tarek disrupts Kalinda's life. Within hours, she is ripped from the comfort of her home, set on a desert trek, and ordered to fight for her place among the rajah's ninety-nine wives and numerous courtesans. Her only solace comes in the company of her guard, the stoic but kind Captain Deven Naik.Faced with the danger of a tournament to the death--and her growing affection for Deven--Kalinda has only one hope for escape, and it lies in an arcane, forbidden power buried within her.
Download or read book Women Courtesans and Queens written by Raffaele Crispino and published by Crispino Raffaele. This book was released on with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ironic, satirical. Learn the History cheerfully. From Marie Antoinette to Greta Garbo. By Messalina to Lucrezia Borgia. All women who have had a life tormented, fascinating and sometimes tragic. Anita Garibaldi will speak of her love for Joseph, who will take her to follow him to Italy. Cleopatra analyze her life and the need to be wicked and cruel enough to push it to kill her sister. The Countess of Castiglione explain the reasons that led it to be a courtesan as the Marquise de Pompadour, will report its ability to remain still the favorite of the king although there were young women decided to take her place. Mona Lisa admire her composure and her way of being a woman in the presence of Leonardo while painting her portrait. Helen of Troy tells us that escape with Paris to Troy was the only wise thing she has done in her life and to have no remorse for the thousands of dead because of her. The reports, reportage interviews with these famous women of every age lead us to expand in every time with the belief that if you want to explain this one must always look to the past
Download or read book Prostitutes and Matrons in the Roman World written by Anise K. Strong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From streetwalkers in the Roman Forum to imperial concubines, Roman prostitutes defined what it meant to be a 'bad girl'.
Download or read book A Courtesan s Guide to Getting Your Man written by Celeste Bradley and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Boston museum curator Piper Chase-Pierpont unearths the steamy memoirs of Regency London's most celebrated courtesan, the Blackbird, she's aroused and challenged by what she finds. Could the courtesan's diaries be used as a modern girl's guide to finding love and empowerment?
Download or read book Confessions of a Courtesan written by Elizabeth Charles and published by Deborah Hale. This book was released on 2011-10-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Scandalous but True! From the harsh streets of 18th century London, Lizzie Cane rose to become the most successful and sought-after courtesan in England! Mistress of earls, dukes and even the young Prince of Wales, she lived an exciting luxurious life that was not without its perils. A single misstep could spell disaster! Then, at the height of her career, she risked everything she had struggled to gain by breaking the courtesan's cardinal rule ... Never fall in love!"--Publisher.
Download or read book The Honest Courtesan written by Margaret F. Rosenthal and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-07-13 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Venetian courtesan has long captured the imagination as a female symbol of sexual license, elegance, beauty, and unruliness. What then to make of the cortigiana onesta—the honest courtesan who recast virtue as intellectual integrity and offered wit and refinement in return for patronage and a place in public life? Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was such a woman, a writer and citizen of Venice, whose published poems and familiar letters offer rich testimony to the complexity of the honest courtesan's position. Margaret F. Rosenthal draws a compelling portrait of Veronica Franco in her cultural social, and economic world. Rosenthal reveals in Franco's writing a passionate support of defenseless women, strong convictions about inequality, and, in the eroticized language of her epistolary verses, the seductive political nature of all poetic contests. It is Veronica Franco's insight into the power conflicts between men and women—and her awareness of the threat she posed to her male contemporaries—that makes her literary works and her dealings with Venetian intellectuals so pertinent today. Combining the resources of biography, history, literary theory, and cultural criticism, this sophisticated interdisciplinary work presents an eloquent and often moving account of one woman's life as an act of self-creation and as a complex response to social forces and cultural conditions. "A book . . . pleasurably redolent of Venice in the 16th-century. Rosenthal gives a vivid sense of a world of salons and coteries, of intricate networks of family and patronage, and of literary exchanges both intellectual and erotic."—Helen Hackett, Times Higher Education Supplement The Honest Courtesan is the basis for the film Dangerous Beauty (1998) directed by Marshall Herskovitz. (The film was re-titled The Honest Courtesan for release in the UK and Europe in 1999.)
Download or read book Queen s Hunt written by Beth Bernobich and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second title in Bernobich's River of Souls novels, following her startling debut, "Passion Play." Two women become allies in their quest for a third jewel, that means salvation or ruin for their people.
Download or read book Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World written by Christopher A. Faraone and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2008-03-14 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World explores the implications of sex-for-pay across a broad span of time, from ancient Mesopotamia to the early Christian period. In ancient times, although they were socially marginal, prostitutes connected with almost every aspect of daily life. They sat in brothels and walked the streets; they paid taxes and set up dedications in religious sanctuaries; they appeared as characters—sometimes admirable, sometimes despicable—on the comic stage and in the law courts; they lived lavishly, consorting with famous poets and politicians; and they participated in otherwise all-male banquets and drinking parties, where they aroused jealousy among their anxious lovers. The chapters in this volume examine a wide variety of genres and sources, from legal and religious tracts to the genres of lyric poetry, love elegy, and comic drama to the graffiti scrawled on the walls of ancient Pompeii. These essays reflect the variety and vitality of the debates engendered by the last three decades of research by confronting the ambiguous terms for prostitution in ancient languages, the difficulty of distinguishing the prostitute from the woman who is merely promiscuous or adulterous, the question of whether sacred or temple prostitution actually existed in the ancient Near East and Greece, and the political and social implications of literary representations of prostitutes and courtesans.
Download or read book God Save the Queen written by Kate Locke and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Year is 2012 - and Queen Victoria still rules with an immortal fist. She's the undead matriarch of a Britain where the Aristocracy is made up of werewolves and vampires, where goblins live underground and mothers know better than to let their children out after dark. A world where technology lives side by side with magic, where being nobility means being infected with the Plague (side-effects include undeath) and Hysteria is the popular affliction of the day. Xandra Vardan is a member of the elite Royal Guard, and it's her duty to protect the Aristocracy. But things get complicated when her sister goes missing. Xandra will not only realise she's the prize in a dangerous power struggle - but she'll also uncover a conspiracy that threatens to topple the empire itself.
