Courtesans: Money, Sex and Fame in the Nineteenth Century

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HarperCollins, Nov 2, 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 384 pages

During the course of the nineteenth century, a small group of women rose from impoverished obscurity to positions of great power, independence, and wealth. In doing so they took control of their lives -- and those of other people -- and made the world do their will.

Extremely accomplished, well-educated, and unusually literate, courtesans exerted an incredible influence as leaders of society. They were not received at court, but inhabited their own parallel world -- the demimonde -- complete with its own hierarchies, etiquette, and protocol. They were queens of fashion, linguists, musicians, accomplished at political intrigue, and, of course, possessors of great erotic gifts. Even to be seen in public with one of the great courtesans was a much-envied achievement.

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About the author (2004)

Katie Hickman was born into a diplomatic family in 1960 and has spent more than twenty-five years living abroad in Europe, the Far East and Latin America. She is the author of three previous books: A Trip to the Light Fantastic -- Travels with a Mexican Circus, which was one of the Independent's 1993 Books of the Year and was short-listed for the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; The Quetzal Summer, a novel set in the Andes, for which she was short-listed for the 1993 Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award; and Dreams of the Peaceful Dragon -- a Journey into Bhutan. She is featured in the Oxford University Press guide to women travellers, Wayward Women.

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