The Courtesan's Revenge: The Life of Harriette Wilson, the Woman Who Blackmailed the King

The author has really done justice to this biography, resisting I am sure the temptation to `sex' the book up, which would have been totally wrong and also unnecessary. This is a wickedly funny biography, a story of a woman, whose name many people will never have heard. It is the life story of Harriette Wilson, who became one of the most famous and most sought after courtesans in the whole of England. Harriette's beauty was a rare sight to behold when many women, even of a young age were disfigured with pox marks or the loss of their teeth and any of the other multitude of diseases prevalent at the time. But apart from being beautiful she was intelligent and funny. The author has managed to draw from a multitude of sources, which have enabled her to distinguish fact from fiction. Although having said that, Harriette led such an extraordinary life that at times the book reads more like a novel than a biography. Harriette Wilson had a sensational and at the same time scandalous life. She was nobody's fool and when her former lovers, some of the most important men in Regency London, including the King himself and no less than four prime minister turned against her, Harriette knew exactly how to take her revenge upon them.

Harriette Wilson (1786-1845) was among last of the great courtesans and became one of the most notorious when, foiled in collecting annuities that had been promised to her by several gentlemen in her retirement, she published her "Memoirs" with the intention of blackmailing virtually every man who had visited her boudoir. The lawsuits sent her publisher, John Joseph Stockdale, to debtors' prison. But Harriette Wilson's "Memoirs" were a sensation that thrilled the reading public and caused panic at the highest levels of British government. Wilson was blackmailing King George IV and his royal mistress Lady Conyngham, among a long list of powerful personalities. Author Frances Wilson presents a meticulous and lively account of Harriette Wilson's colorful life, from her birth into a tradesman's family in Mayfair, through her reign over England's demi-monde and seduction of its grande-monde, when she cost £50 (over $3000 today) for just an introduction, to her eventual retirement and publication of her "Memoirs" in 1825, through the last years of her life. For all that she wrote about herself, Harriette Wilson is a perplexing character. Born before the anti-sex fervor of the 19th century posited chastity as the primarily requirement of femininity and women with any carnal appetite came to be feared, Harriette Wilson valued her freedom above all else. She might have had an aristocratic marriage, but she didn't have the temperament for it. "Constancy and convention in relationships were anathemas to her." That's refreshing. But was Harriette's personality bigger than her talents? She reminds me of Mae West: saucy, bold, flirtatious, and completely convinced that she is the most fascinating and sexiest woman around. So certain is she of her allure that force of will makes it so. She excelled in self-promotion. Was Harriette a wronged woman or a vicious blackmailer? She didn't confine her threats to those who had reneged on promises. She begged money until the end. But if only a few men had paid her what she asked -which many did- Harriette would have had enough money to live on. She handled money poorly and lived beyond her means. Adding to the considerable drama that followed the publication of Harriette Wilson's "Memoirs" was a rebuttal of Harriette's account by fellow courtesan and former friend Julia Storer Johnstone, which Miss Johnstone called her "Confessions". The "Confessions" are accepted by some as the more truthful account, but Frances Wilson points out that is not the case. Harriette Wilson took liberties with dates and details in her "Memoirs", but many of the events can be verified by secondary sources. When the "Memoirs" must be relied upon for explicit information, they are problematic. The men who successfully bought themselves out of the book do not appear within its pages. So many of Harriette Wilson's liaisons remain a mystery. "The Courtesan's Revenge" is an intriguing biography and an detailed piece of the social history of Regen