Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies: Sex in the City in Georgian Britain

Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies was a bestseller of the 18th century, selling 250,000 copies in an age before mass consumerism. An annual “guide book,” it detailed the names and “specialities” of the capital’s prostitutes. During its heyday, 1757–1795, Harris’s List was the essential accessory for any serious gentleman of pleasure. Yet beyond its titillating passages lay a glimpse into the lives of those who lived and died by the List’s profits during the Georgian era. Hallie Rubenhold has collected the funniest, ruddiest, and most surreal entries penned by Jack Harris, “Pimp-General-of-All-England” into this book.