London's Sinful Secret
The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London's Georgian Age
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3.4 • 25 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Georgian London evokes images of elegant mannered buildings, but it was also a city where prostitution was rife and houses of ill repute widespread in a sex trade that employed thousands.
In London's Sinful Secret, Dan Cruickshank explores this erotic Georgian underworld and shows how it affected almost every aspect of life and culture in the city from the smart new streets that sprang up in Marylebone, to the squalid alleys around Charing Cross to the coffee houses, where prostitutes plied their trade, to the work of artists such as William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds. Cruickshank uses memoirs, newspaper accounts and court records to create a surprisingly bawdy portrait of London at its most-mannered and, for the first time, exposes its secret, sinful underside.
"A lively work of social history, full of surprises and memorable characters." - Kirkus Reviews
Customer Reviews
I Didn’t Want The Book To End
An absolutely wonderful, engaging book and very thoroughly researched. If footnotes are your thing, this book is for you. The book covers a part of Georgian history not usually discussed, but played an important role in the shaping of London. Cruicksank gives a delightful overview of the sex trade, its critical place in the economy and who were the personalities and city leaders at that time. He gives a real sense of what it must have been like to live back during the 17th and 18th Centuries around Covent Garden. Definitely worth reading.