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190 reviews for:
The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack & The Extraordinary Story of Harris' List
Hallie Rubenhold
3.65 AVERAGE
190 reviews for:
The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack & The Extraordinary Story of Harris' List
Hallie Rubenhold
3.65 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
4/10
Unfortunately this didn't work for me. Despite some issues with The Five I still found it super engaging and a page-turner; however, The Covent Garden Ladies was the complete opposite. The writing style felt extremely dry and made my reading experience a very boring one. I appreciated the insight into the Covent Garden Ladies though. Hadn't this book been a gift, I would've probably dnfed it.
Unfortunately this didn't work for me. Despite some issues with The Five I still found it super engaging and a page-turner; however, The Covent Garden Ladies was the complete opposite. The writing style felt extremely dry and made my reading experience a very boring one. I appreciated the insight into the Covent Garden Ladies though. Hadn't this book been a gift, I would've probably dnfed it.
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
I see the authors reply to another review that the reason there's no detailed footnotes is thanks to an editorial decision, and was out of her hands. for that i am gutted because i love reading those in nonfic!! but aside from that, this was a fascinating book. would rec the audiobook!
As Rubenhold wrote in the introduction to this book, our idea of Georgian England is so embedded in Jane Austen's portrayal of the time that we as a society have perpetuated (as the successors of the Victorians, who willed it so) that we forget about the richness of the colourful, rowdy, cruel, and unchained of the eighteenth century. In this biography, the author brings back to life a section of society often relegated in historical accounts of the period, which in turn helps elucidate all of these aspects that coexisted with the primness and constriction of normative femininity and respectable society.
With the utmost respect and accurately researched facts and figures, Rubenhold tells us of the life, career, and legacy of several of the big names in early c18 Covent Garden sex work business, their biographies completed with detailed accounts of the practices involved in it, from the illicit procurement of sex workers to instruments for male sexual gratification. I have learnt SO much reading this book and I recommend it most heartily. Most importantly, for me, it has shaken up my own perceptions and understanding as a literary historian specialising in the c18, which were vague and decontextualised.
With the utmost respect and accurately researched facts and figures, Rubenhold tells us of the life, career, and legacy of several of the big names in early c18 Covent Garden sex work business, their biographies completed with detailed accounts of the practices involved in it, from the illicit procurement of sex workers to instruments for male sexual gratification. I have learnt SO much reading this book and I recommend it most heartily. Most importantly, for me, it has shaken up my own perceptions and understanding as a literary historian specialising in the c18, which were vague and decontextualised.
Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five was one of my favourite non-fiction reads of 2020 for many reasons, one of them being the fact that Rubenhold told the stories of five women that history had forgotten. For well over a century, people have obsessed over and, hell, even romanticised Jack the Ripper. Everyone wants to know who Jack the Ripper was, but no one seems interested in who his victims were. Hallie Rubenhold wrote The Five as a means of changing this. By writing The Five, she gave a voice to the Canonical Five – Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly – who, up until the book’s publication, had largely been overlooked by historians, writers and true crime enthusiasts.
And this is what I liked about The Covent Garden Ladies. Published fourteen years before The Five, The Covent Garden Ladies gives a voice to those who have slipped between the cracks in history. Rubenhold not only discusses the lives and careers of pimp Jack Harris, down and out poet Samuel Derrick and madam Charlotte Hayes, she also delves into the lives of the women who worked out of the pubs and brothels they ran or frequented. She details the daily struggles of an 18th century sex worker with brutal honesty, an honesty that will have readers’ hearts breaking for these long-dead women. It wasn’t uncommon for women to be forcibly ‘recruited’ into the sex trade, and, once working for a pimp or madam, they simultaneously became objects of lust and disdain. Men would point disapprovingly with one hand while dishing out guineas to pay for their services with the other.
There’s a chapter in The Covent Garden Ladies in which passages from various editions of Harris’s List are printed verbatim. It’s a grim read. Not only is each sex worker’s ‘write up’ (I can’t think of a better way to describe them) laced with stomach-churning misogyny, they’re very often filled with complete and utter nonsense that will make any reader grateful to have been born in the 20th (or even 21st – I’m getting so old) century. There was one particular ‘write up’ that, if I interpreted it correctly, blames a woman supposedly being “very wide and relaxed in a particular place” on her excessive consumption of tea (page 182, 2020 edition). If that was in any way true, my internal organs would have spilled out of me about ten years ago. Sure, the people of centuries past built the foundation upon which today’s society was built…but God, some of them were absolute idiots.
If you were a fan of Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five and are a fan of books that give history’s marginalised women a voice, The Covent Garden Ladies is a book that you should definitely read.
And this is what I liked about The Covent Garden Ladies. Published fourteen years before The Five, The Covent Garden Ladies gives a voice to those who have slipped between the cracks in history. Rubenhold not only discusses the lives and careers of pimp Jack Harris, down and out poet Samuel Derrick and madam Charlotte Hayes, she also delves into the lives of the women who worked out of the pubs and brothels they ran or frequented. She details the daily struggles of an 18th century sex worker with brutal honesty, an honesty that will have readers’ hearts breaking for these long-dead women. It wasn’t uncommon for women to be forcibly ‘recruited’ into the sex trade, and, once working for a pimp or madam, they simultaneously became objects of lust and disdain. Men would point disapprovingly with one hand while dishing out guineas to pay for their services with the other.
There’s a chapter in The Covent Garden Ladies in which passages from various editions of Harris’s List are printed verbatim. It’s a grim read. Not only is each sex worker’s ‘write up’ (I can’t think of a better way to describe them) laced with stomach-churning misogyny, they’re very often filled with complete and utter nonsense that will make any reader grateful to have been born in the 20th (or even 21st – I’m getting so old) century. There was one particular ‘write up’ that, if I interpreted it correctly, blames a woman supposedly being “very wide and relaxed in a particular place” on her excessive consumption of tea (page 182, 2020 edition). If that was in any way true, my internal organs would have spilled out of me about ten years ago. Sure, the people of centuries past built the foundation upon which today’s society was built…but God, some of them were absolute idiots.
If you were a fan of Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five and are a fan of books that give history’s marginalised women a voice, The Covent Garden Ladies is a book that you should definitely read.
I listened to 3 hours of the audiobook and gave up rather than listening to the next 7 hours. It didn’t hold my interest, and didn’t seem to be about the women at all.
adventurous
informative
sad
fast-paced
I absolutely loved this - I’m an 18th century girl, I did my dissertation on the era, and it was really fun to see people who I had come across in my research crop up in this like David Garrick! I found it very easy to read, the gossipy bits punctuated by moments of real seriousness. The story of Jack Harris didn’t really interest me although I recognise it was important for context, but Sam Derrick and Charlotte Hayes gripped me. I loved Harlots - BRING BACK HARLOTS! - and the character of Charlotte Wells, and you can really see where they got certain inspirations for that character from Hayes. Being me, I loved the glimpses of the Charlotte and Dennis love story, where’s their romance novel! Ultimately though the subject of this book is something that is genuinely incredibly grim and as much fun I had reading this I’m going to be thinking and wondering about the fates of the women and girls who populated the list and never got biographies written about them for a long time.
challenging
funny
slow-paced