Skittles: the Last Victorian Courtesan PDF Download

Author: Henry Blyth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Author: Ed Rayner
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 075249628X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Notions of what is scandalous vary from age to age, but our fascination with all things outrageous remains the same. Whether the sexual disgraces of the Victorian era or the political outrages of modern times, the shocking and the immoral never cease to cause a stir among the masses. Bestselling partnership Ed Rayner and Ron Stapley return with their latest collection of fascinating historical facts, this time about weird and wonderful scandals throughout the ages. From the sexual scandals of the Victorian music halls, the trial of Oscar Wilde and the adventures of Ned Kelly to the hanging of Ruth Ellis and even the shooting of Tony Martin, this book is a must for all those interested in the history of scandal.

Author: Alan Cameron
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400887429
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 549

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Callimachus has usually been seen as the archetypal ivory-tower poet, the epitome if not the inventor of the concept of art for art's sake, author of erudite works written to be read in book form by fellow poets and scholars. Abundant evidence, much of it assembled here for the first time, suggests a very different story: a world of civic festivals rather than books and libraries, a world in which poetry and poets played a central and public role. In the course of the argument, Cameron casts fresh light on the lives, dates, works, and interrelationships of most of the other leading poets of the age. Another axiom of modern scholarship is that the object of Callimachus's literary polemic was epic. Yet Cameron shows that the thriving school of epic poets celebrating the wars of Hellenistic kings that has so dominated modern study simply never existed. Elegy was the fashionable genre of the age, and the bone of contention between Callimachus and his rivals (all fellow elegists) was the nature of elegiac narrative. A final chapter sketches some of the implications of this revised view of Callimachus and his world for the interpretation of Roman, especially Augustan, poetry. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author: George Watt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317200802
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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A sympathetic view of the fallen women in Victorian England begins in the novel. First published in 1984, this book shows that the fallen woman in the nineteenth-century novel is, amongst other things, a direct response to the new society. Through the examination of Dickens, Gaskell, Collins, Moore, Trollope, Gissing and Hardy, it demonstrates that the fallen woman is the first in a long line of sympathetic creations which clash with many prevailing social attitudes, and especially with the supposedly accepted dichotomy of the ‘two women’. This book will be of interest to students of nineteenth-century literature and women in literature.

Author: Peter Gay
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393319033
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Education of the Senses, the first book of Peter Gay's projected multi-volume study of the European and American middle classes from the 1820s to the outbreak of World War I, re-examines the sexual behavior and attitudes of Victorians

Author: Ian Graham
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466868171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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In 1965, an impoverished elderly woman was found dead in Nice, France. Her death marked the end of an era; she was the last of the great courtesans. Known as La Belle Otero, she was a volcanic Spanish beauty whose patrons included Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia. She accumulated an enormous fortune, but gambled it all away. Scarlet Women tells her story and many more, including: Marie Duplessis, who inspired characters by both Dumas and Verdi; Clara Ward, a rare American courtesan who hunted for a European aristocrat, but having married a Belgian prince, ran away with a gypsy violinist; Ninon de L'Enclos, who was offered 50,000 crowns by Cardinal Richelieu for one night. Money left in her will paid for Voltaire's education. Courtesans were an elite group of talented, professional mistresses. The most successful became wealthy and famous in their own right. While they led charmed lives, they occupied a curious position: they enjoyed freedom and political power unknown to most women, but they were ostracised by polite society. From the hetaerae of ancient Greece to the cortigiani onesti of 16th century Venice, the oiran of Edo-period Japan to the demimondaines of 19th century France, this captivating book--perfect for readers of A Treasury of Royal Scandals--uncovers the rich, colorful lives of these women who dared to pursue fortunes outside their societies' norms.

Author: Arthur Marwick
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826439454
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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If Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch longer, neither Caesar nor Mark Antony would have fallen in love with her. It: A History of Human Beauty treats outstanding physical attractiveness as a quality or possession, comparable to power, intelligence, strength, wealth, education or family, that had a marked effect on history. Beauty in men and women opened opportunities to its possessors not available to the ordinary looking or ugly. While in the past women have had to use the lure of sex to achieve power or wealth, epitomised by royal mistresses or the Grandes Horizontales of the nineteenth century, modern film stars (male and female) can acquire great wealth simply by the use of their images, while attractiveness on television is an essential modern qualification for power, as shown by Ronald Reagan and Tony Blair.

Author: Jane Ridley
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812994752
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 611

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE BOSTON GLOBE This richly entertaining biography chronicles the eventful life of Queen Victoria’s firstborn son, the quintessential black sheep of Buckingham Palace, who matured into as wise and effective a monarch as Britain has ever seen. Granted unprecedented access to the royal archives, noted scholar Jane Ridley draws on numerous primary sources to paint a vivid portrait of the man and the age to which he gave his name. Born Prince Albert Edward, and known to familiars as “Bertie,” the future King Edward VII had a well-earned reputation for debauchery. A notorious gambler, glutton, and womanizer, he preferred the company of wastrels and courtesans to the dreary life of the Victorian court. His own mother considered him a lazy halfwit, temperamentally unfit to succeed her. When he ascended to the throne in 1901, at age fifty-nine, expectations were low. Yet by the time he died nine years later, he had proven himself a deft diplomat, hardworking head of state, and the architect of Britain’s modern constitutional monarchy. Jane Ridley’s colorful biography rescues the man once derided as “Edward the Caresser” from the clutches of his historical detractors. Excerpts from letters and diaries shed new light on Bertie’s long power struggle with Queen Victoria, illuminating one of the most emotionally fraught mother-son relationships in history. Considerable attention is paid to King Edward’s campaign of personal diplomacy abroad and his valiant efforts to reform the political system at home. Separating truth from legend, Ridley also explores Bertie’s relationships with the women in his life. Their ranks comprised his wife, the stunning Danish princess Alexandra, along with some of the great beauties of the era: the actress Lillie Langtry, longtime “royal mistress” Alice Keppel (the great-grandmother of Camilla Parker Bowles), and Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston. Edward VII waited nearly six decades for his chance to rule, then did so with considerable panache and aplomb. A magnificent life of an unexpectedly impressive king, The Heir Apparent documents the remarkable transformation of a man—and a monarchy—at the dawn of a new century. Praise for The Heir Apparent “If [The Heir Apparent] isn’t the definitive life story of this fascinating figure of British history, then nothing ever will be.”—The Christian Science Monitor “The Heir Apparent is smart, it’s fascinating, it’s sometimes funny, it’s well-documented and it reads like a novel, with Bertie so vivid he nearly leaps from the page, cigars and all.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “I closed The Heir Apparent with admiration and a kind of wry exhilaration.”—The Wall Street Journal “Ridley is a serious scholar and historian, who keeps Bertie’s flaws and virtues in a fine balance.”—The Boston Globe “Brilliantly entertaining . . . a landmark royal biography.”—The Sunday Telegraph “Superb.”—The New York Times Book Review

Author: A.W. Exley
Publisher: A W Exley
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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One... death by spontaneous human combustion is a rare act of God. Two... is surely a freakish coincidence. Three... well, that's starting to look deliberate. Cara has a new role as Queen Victoria's artifact hunter, she's adapting to married life and living in a country manor that more closely resembles a mausoleum. In London, Inspector Fraser investigates a series of strange deaths by divine fire - except he doesn't believe in coincidences. Despite himself, he enlists Cara's help to identify what artifact could cause such a hideous death while his desire to bring her husband to justice burns unabated. Someone's intent on making sure a decades old secret stays hidden and Cara must figure out who is responsible before this case consumes her family and rocks the entire realm to its foundations. A steampunk adventure perfect for fans of Gail Carriger, Shelley Adina, CJ Archer and Bec McMaster. Keywords: steampunk, gaslamp, historical fantasy, victorian, paranormal romance, action and adventure, alternate history

Author: Hera Cook
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191530891
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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In this book Hera Cook traces the path of sexuality in England, and shows how its route was determined by the gradual exertion of control over fertility. Most sexual activity had major economic and social costs, the most fundamental of which was the physical cost of children upon women's bodies. Around 1800 birth rates reached historical heights. Using a combination of demographic and qualitative sources, Dr Cook examines the connection between the struggle to lower fertility and the increasing repression of sexuality throughout the nineteenth century. Contraception became a viable option in the early twentieth century. The book charts the resulting slow relaxation of attitudes to sexuality and the remaking of heterosexual physical behaviour, culminating in the sexual revolution of the 1960s.