In Bed with the Georgians: Sex, Scandal and Satire in the 18th Century

In Bed with the Georgians provides a fascinating insight into life under the bed-clothes in Georgian England, where the Madams and pimps were able to thrive in the eighteenth century like never before. It looks at high-class seraglios as well as the brothels, jelly-houses and bagnios which flourished openly, especially in the area around Covent Garden. It looks at courtesans from the highest echelons of society, the kept women, the sex-workers in ‘houses of pleasure’, down through to the street walkers and common whores. It shows the way that the sex scene was portrayed in contemporary letters and press reports, and focuses on royal scandals, aristocratic shenanigans and immoral behaviour. The book looks at the role of Grub Street, the growth of celebrity status, and the way courtesans occupied a demi-monde of great popularity, with their enormous wealth and conspicuous spending. In particular it looks at the way that caricaturists, such as Gillray, Rowlandson, Newton, and Cruikshank, pilloried the rich and famous for their peccadilloes, satirizing their wild excesses, and by so doing helped inform the general public of what their ‘social superiors’ were getting up to. This book is lavishly illustrated in colour and contains a useful glossary of many aspects of the world of the sex trade in London two and a half centuries ago.