From Mary Blayney, the acclaimed author of Stranger’s Kiss, comes this irresistible new novel of historical romance featuring the Pennistan family. In Courtesan’s Kiss, an independent woman is determined to make her way in the world—even if it’s a scandalous one. But first she must escape a nobleman with plans of his own In the wake of a broken engagement and shunned by the ton, Mia Castellano does not retire to the country, as a proper young lady might, but sees her chance to escape society’s restraints—by becoming a courtesan. In her mind, no unmarried young woman is as free as a courtesan. She alone controls her destiny: managing her own money, having her own house, choosing her lovers. There’s only one obstacle in Mia’s path—Lord David Pennistan. As a favor to his brother, Lord David agrees to escort Mia to his family’s home in Derbyshire, where her guardian awaits. Mia attracts nothing but trouble from the outset of their journey, yet with every adventure they share, Lord David’s desire for his charge grows. When they’re caught in a compromising situation, Lord David insists that she marry him. But there’s only one thing Mia wants from David, and it isn’t his charity or his title. Can he convince her before it’s too late that the love she wants is already hers—to take or to lose forever? Can he win more from this untamed beauty than just a courtesan’s kiss?

This title, first published in 1979, is a glossary of the bawdy vocabulary that was used in Renaissance Drama. One of the primary functions of this gloss of literary bawdy is to interpret imaginative uses of the language rather than simply record the generally accepted uses and meanings, with its principal task to make the dialogue of the plays more intelligible to the reader. With examples of bawdy language used in the works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Webster amongst many others, this title will be of great interest to students of literature and performance studies.

Witty nicknames, crude jokes, public nudity and lavish monuments, all of these things distinguished Greek courtesans from respectable citizen women in ancient Greece. Although prostitutes appear as early as archaic Greek lyric poetry, our fullest accounts come from the late second century CE. Drawing on Book 13 of the Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae--which contains almost all known references to hetaeras from all periods of Greek literature--Laura K. McClure has created a window onto the ways ancient Greeks perceived the courtesan and the role of the courtesan in Greek life.

Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World explores the implications of sex-for-pay across a broad span of time, from ancient Mesopotamia to the early Christian period. In ancient times, although they were socially marginal, prostitutes connected with almost every aspect of daily life. They sat in brothels and walked the streets; they paid taxes and set up dedications in religious sanctuaries; they appeared as characters—sometimes admirable, sometimes despicable—on the comic stage and in the law courts; they lived lavishly, consorting with famous poets and politicians; and they participated in otherwise all-male banquets and drinking parties, where they aroused jealousy among their anxious lovers. The chapters in this volume examine a wide variety of genres and sources, from legal and religious tracts to the genres of lyric poetry, love elegy, and comic drama to the graffiti scrawled on the walls of ancient Pompeii. These essays reflect the variety and vitality of the debates engendered by the last three decades of research by confronting the ambiguous terms for prostitution in ancient languages, the difficulty of distinguishing the prostitute from the woman who is merely promiscuous or adulterous, the question of whether sacred or temple prostitution actually existed in the ancient Near East and Greece, and the political and social implications of literary representations of prostitutes and courtesans.

‘The Mimes of the Courtesans’ features a series of dialogues between two courtesans or a courtesan and another, discussing love and sex and the relationship between lovers. Living at the height of the Roman Empire, Lucian wrote these short dialogues of working girls competing for clients, dishing gossip and candid tips of the trade, men trying to keep their girls' attention with expensive gifts. It also portrays the dark side of the hetaera's life: out-of-control parties, blowhard men, and putting up with rough treatment by clients. This translation was published during the 1920s. The identity of the translator is only known by the initials 'A.L.H.' on the Translator's Foreword page.

Courtesans - women who achieve wealth, status, or power through sexual transgression - have played both a central and contradictory role in literature: they have been admired, celebrated, feared, and vilified. This study of the courtesan in Renaissance English drama focuses not only on the moral ambivalence of these women, but with special attention to Anglo-Italian relations, illuminates little known aspects of their lives. It traces the courtesan from a wry comedic character in the plays of Terence and Plautus to its literary exhaustion in the seventeenth-century dramatic works of Dekker, Marston, Webster, Middleton, Shirley and Brome. The author focuses especially on the presentation of the courtesan in the sixteenth century - dramas by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Lyly view the courtesan as a symbol of social disease and decay, transforming classical conventions into English prejudices. Renaissance Anglo-Italian cultural and sexual relations are also investigated through comparisons of travel narratives, original source materials, and analysis of Aretino's representations of celebrated Italian courtesans. Amid these fascinating tales of aspiration, desire and despair lingers the intriguing question of who was the 'dark lady' of Shakespeare's sonnets.

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.

There has always been a special class of women who defy conventional morality and family structures in order to achieve power beyond any "legitimate" bride. These are the Courtesans. More than mere common strumpets they are courted as much for their razor sharp wits, minds and sporting skill as much as for sex. Set primarily in the golden age of the English Courtesan between the Restoration and the early 20th Centuries, Courtesans offers a unique political and adversarial Roleplaying experience like no other.

Giulia Bigolina's (ca. 1516-ca. 1569) Urania (ca. 1552) is the oldest known prose romance to have been written by an Italian woman. In Kissing the Wild Woman, Christopher Nissen explores the unique aesthetic vision and innovative narrative features of Bigolina's greatest surviving work, in which she fashioned a new type of narrative that combined elements of the romance and the novella and included a polemical treatise on the moral implications of portraiture and the role of women in the arts. Demonstrating that Bigolina challenged cultural authority by rejecting the prevailing views of both painting and literature, Nissen discusses Bigolina's suggestion that painting constituted an ineffectual, even immoral mode of self-promotion for women in relation to the views of the contemporary writer Pietro Aretino and the painter Titian. Kissing the Wild Woman's analysis of this little-known work adds a new dimension to the study of Renaissance aesthetics in relation to art history, Renaissance thought, women's studies, and Italian literature.

One fateful night changed my life forever and brought secrets to light I never could have imagined, leaving me parentless, penniless, and caring for an ailing sister. My father was not the man I thought I knew, and his greed and sickness have left me with virtually nothing to use to care for my sister and get her the treatments she needs to maybe one day walk again. And now, we might lose our house, as well. Luckily, an ad in the paper helps me regain some hope. I have something to barter with that not many courtesans have, after all, and it just might be enough to earn what’s needed to secure my future as a successful Blood Courtesan. My first client turns out to be the man of my dreams, the sexy-as-sin vampire rock star I’ve lusted after since I was a teen, but he wants nothing to do with me or what I have to offer. My father’s misdeeds continue to haunt me and I’m left with only one option: I need to make the talented and headstrong Lyric Rivers desire me, or lose everything. Maybe even my life. The Blood Courtesans Series, where vampires are real, rich, powerful--and hungry. Blood is bought and sold like fine wine, and the best blood goes to the highest bidder. It's not supposed to be about love ... until it is.