London's Sinful Secret

The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London's Georgian Age

Dan Cruickshank

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780312658984
• eBook ISBN: 9781429919562
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

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

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• Map
• PROLOGUE: An Artist’s View: William Hogarth and The Harlot’s Progress
• ACT ONE: SEX IN THE CITY
• ACT TWO: THE ARCHITECTURE OF SIN
• ACT THREE: THE TASTE OF SIN
• ACT FOUR: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE VIEWS
• APPENDICES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• NOTES
• INDEX
• Copyright