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
**
From Booklist
Prostitution in 1700s London produced all manner of effects, as Cruickshank’s social history shows. Its profits poured into construction. Its depravities motivated reformers, who built havens for fallen women. Its scenes provoked literary works by John Gay and Henry Fielding. Its clientele included James Boswell and a number of now-obscure roués, whose stories are told in court cases. To Cruickshank, London’s Georgian-age sex industry opens a vista on the proletarian side of society, one he visually invokes with contemporary illustrations throughout his historical exploration. He opens with a series of prints by William Hogarth entitled The Harlot’s Progress, which depicts a woman’s descent into destitution and early death. Against the uncountable thousands of such victims, Cruickshank’s vignettes of the century’s few courtesans who blazed into public celebrity and relative prosperity only underscore the odds against a woman’s escape from the vortex of vice. Insightful about attitudes and mores, empathic, and well researched, Cruickshank’s work, while serious and not prurient, contains several passages and images that, conceivably, some public library patrons might consider excessively graphic, so caveat emptor. --Gilbert Taylor
About the Author
DAN CRUICKSHANK is an architectural historian and television presenter. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, a member of the Executive Committee of the Georgian Group, and on the Architectural Panel of the National Trust. His recent work includes the television programmes and accompanying books Around the World in 80 Treasures and Dan Cruickshank’s Adventures in Architecture. He lives in Spitalfields, London.
Europe,Great Britain,History,Social History,Social Science
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