Harris's List of the Covent Garden Ladies

Oct 20, 2024 1:38 AM

Author:Hallie Rubenhold

By the bestselling winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize 2019 for THE FIVE: THE WOMEN KILLED BY JACK THE RIPPER

This is the book that inspired ITV'S hit drama HARLOTS.

If you ever wondered what Jane Austen's Mr Darcy and his fellows got up to on their numerous trips to London, here is the book they would certainly have carried around ...

HARRIS'S LIST OF COVENT GARDEN LADIES was a bestseller in the Eighteenth Century, shifting 250,000 copoies in an age before mass consumerism. A 'guide book' published annually at Christmas, it detailed the names, attributes and 'specialities' of the capital's prostitutes. During its heyday (1759 -95) HARRIS'S LIST was the essential accessory for any serious gentleman of pleasure.

Hallie Rubenhold has collected the funniest, rudest and most bizarre entries penned by Jack Harris, Pimp-General-of-all-England, into this fascinating and mischievous collection.

Reviews

A compendium of enlightening snippets . . . Just looking at the quirky cover made me wonder if the book had been shelved in the Hogwarts' library . . . worth the book's price for anyone tasked with running positive school assemblies. I hadn't met all the quotes before and the information was entertaining.

—— www.thebookbag.co.uk

With travelling advice and trustworthy recommendations, Man of the World should be the first thing in your suitcase this summer

—— Shortlist magazine

I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language as Mr Burgess has done here - the fact that this is also a very funny book may pass unnoticed.

—— William Burroughs

Burgess’s dystopian fantasy still fascinates as it clocks up 50 years

—— The Times

The 50th anniversary of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange is celebrated this weekend with the publication of a handsome new hardback edition (the edges of its paper are orange!) by Random House (£20). It is compiled and edited by Andrew Biswell – Burgess's biographer – and has a foreword by Martin Amis, as well as unpublished material including a 1972 interview with Burgess, the prologue to his 1986 A Clockwork Orange: A Play With Music, and his annotated 1961 typescript of the novel, complete with his doodles in the margins. His picture of an orange with a spring poking out of it is particularly special

—— Independent

We might therefore suppose that Burgess would appreciate the publication of a “restored edition” of A Clockwork Orange (Heinemann, £20; US, W. W. Norton, $24.95) to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his best-known work. Expertly edited by Andrew Biswell, and including a foreword by Martin Amis and a wealth of supplementary materials – explanatory notes, an expanded glossary of Nasdat, contemporary reviews by Kingsley Amis and Malcolm Bradbury among others, essays by Burgess and the “Prologue” and “Epilogue” to his musical stage version (1987) – the volume grants Burgess the kind of salutatory treatment he bestowed on others.

—— TLS

The perfect holiday read

—— Country Homes and Interiors

Wherever your seaside haunt this book is one to pack

—— Field

A real mine of information. Thoroughly recommended

—— Best of British

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