"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 of the Eighteenth Century, shifting 250,000 copoies in an age before mass consumerism. An annual 'guide book', and published at Christmas time, 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 mischievous little book."

From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling and prizewinning author of THE FIVE 'A fascinating expose of the seamy side of eighteenth century life' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Rubenhold's pages practically reek with smelly, pox-ridden Georgian Soho' GUARDIAN ---------- In 1757, a down-and-out Irish poet, the head waiter at the Shakespear's Head Tavern in Covent Garden, and a celebrated London courtesan became bound together by the publication of a little book: Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies. This salacious work - detailing the names and 'specialities' of the capital's sex-workers- became one of the eighteenth century's most scandalous bestsellers. Yet beyond its titillating passages lies a glimpse into the lives of those who lived and died by its profits - a tragicomic opera of the Georgian era, motivated by poverty, passionate love, aspiration and shame. In this modern and visceral narrative, historian Hallie Rubenhold reveals the story behind Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, and the legion of ordinary women whose lives in the sex trade history has chosen to ignore. ______ 'Scrupulously researched' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Crackles with drama and tension' GUARDIAN 'Compelling and ingenious' INDEPENDENT WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: *****'Brilliant. Full of intelligent insight which brings this period to vibrant life' *****'A wonderful insight into sheer survival of women during this period' *****'A fascinating, breath-taking journey back in time'

The history of the scandalous 18th-century bestseller, 'Harris' List', an infamous guidebook of prostitutes which detailed addresses, physical characteristics and 'specialities' and sold over 250,000 copies over 20 years.

'Harris's List' was a best-seller of the 18th century shifting 250,000 copies. An annual 'guide book', it detailed the names and 'specialities' of London's prostitutes. Hallie Rubenhold has collected the funniest, rudest and most surreal entries penned by Jack Harris in this book.

Now published with the new title THE SCANDALOUS LADY W It was the divorce that scandalised Georgian England... She was a spirited young heiress. He was a handsome baronet with a promising career in government. Their marriage had the makings of a fairy tale but ended as one of the most salacious and highly publicised divorces in history. For over two hundred years the story of Lady Worsley, her vengeful husband, and her lover, George Maurice Bisset, lay forgotten. Now Hallie Rubenhold, in her impeccably researched book, throws open a window to a rarely seen view of Georgian England, one coloured by passion, adventure and the defiance of social convention. The Worsley's story, their struggles and outrageous lifestyle, promises to shock even the modern reader.

Oliver Goldsmith arrived in England in 1756 a penniless Irishman. He toiled for years in the anonymity of Grub Street—already a synonym for impoverished hack writers—before he became one of literary London’s most celebrated authors. Norma Clarke tells the extraordinary story of this destitute scribbler turned gentleman of letters as it unfolds in the early days of commercial publishing, when writers’ livelihoods came to depend on the reading public, not aristocratic patrons. Clarke examines a network of writers radiating outward from Goldsmith: the famous and celebrated authors of Dr. Johnson’s “Club” and those far less fortunate “brothers of the quill” trapped in Grub Street. Clarke emphasizes Goldsmith’s sense of himself as an Irishman, showing that many of his early literary acquaintances were Irish émigrés: Samuel Derrick, John Pilkington, Paul Hiffernan, and Edward Purdon. These writers tutored Goldsmith in the ways of Grub Street, and their influence on his development has not previously been explored. Also Irish was the patron he acquired after 1764, Robert Nugent, Lord Clare. Clarke places Goldsmith in the tradition of Anglo-Irish satirists beginning with Jonathan Swift. He transmuted troubling truths about the British Empire into forms of fable and nostalgia whose undertow of Irish indignation remains perceptible, if just barely, beneath an equanimous English surface. To read Brothers of the Quill is to be taken by the hand into the darker corners of eighteenth-century Grub Street, and to laugh and cry at the absurdities of the writing life.