Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies
Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1757 - 1795, was an annual directory of prostitutes then working in Georgian London. A small pocketbook, it was printed and published in Covent Garden, and sold for two shilling sixpence. A contemporary report of 1791 estimates its circulation at about 8,000 copies annually.
Each edition contains entries describing the physical appearance and sexual specialties of about 120–190 prostitutes who worked in and around Covent Garden. Through their erotic prose, the list's entries review some of these women in lurid detail. While most compliment their subjects, some are critical of bad habits, and a few women are even treated as pariahs, perhaps having fallen out of favor with the list's authors, who are never revealed.
Samuel Derrick ↗ is the man normally credited for the design of Harris's List, possibly having been inspired by the activities of a Covent Garden pimp, Jack Harris. A Grub Street hack writer, Derrick may have written the lists from 1757 until his death in 1769; thereafter, the annual's authors are unknown. Throughout its print run, it was published pseudonymously by H. Ranger, although from the late 1780s it was printed by three men: John and James Roach, and John Aitkin.
As the public's opinion began to turn against London's sex trade, and with reformers petitioning the authorities to take action, those involved in the release of Harris's List were in 1795 fined and imprisoned. That year's edition was the last to be published. By then, its content was cruder, lacking the originality of earlier editions. Modern writers tend to view Harris's List as erotica; in the words of one author, it was designed for "solitary sexual enjoyment".
See also [ The Blue Book ]
Description
Introduction
The earliest printed editions of Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies appeared after Christmas 1756. Published by "H. Ranger", the annual was advertised on the front pages of newspapers, and sold in Covent Garden and at booksellers' stalls. Each edition comprises an attractive pocketbook, "beautifully packaged ... in the modish style of the twelve". By this the author means duodecimo-sized pages. They usually contained no more than 150 pages of relatively thin paper, on which are printed the details of between 120 and 190 prostitutes then working in Covent Garden. Priced in 1788 at two and sixpence (equivalent to about (equivalent to about £17.45 in 2021), Harris's List was affordable for the middle classes but expensive for a working class man.
It was not the first directory of prostitutes to be circulated in London. The Wandering Whore ran for five issues between 1660 and 1661, in the early (and newly liberal) years of the Restoration. Allegedly an exposé of the capital's sex trade and usually attributed to John Garfield, it lists streets in Footnotes
Bibliography
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- Denlinger, Elizabeth Campbell (2002). The Garment and the Man: Masculine Desire in "Harris's List of Covent-Garden Ladies," 1764–1793 11, 357–394.
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- Harvey, Karen (2004). Reading sex in the eighteenth century: bodies and gender in English erotic culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82235-0.
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- Rubenhold, Hallie (2005). The Covent Garden Ladies. Stroud: Tempus Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-0-7524-2850-5.
- Sova, Dawn B. (2006). Literature suppressed on sexual grounds. New York: Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8160-6272-0.
- Thomas, Donald (1969). A Long Time Burning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
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Further reading
- Cruickshank, Dan (2010). The Secret History of Georgian London. London: Windmill Books. ISBN 978-0-09-952796-1.
- Freeman, Janet Ing (2012). Jack Harris and 'Honest Ranger': The Publication and Prosecution of Harris's List of Covent-Garden Ladies, 1760–95 7th ser., vol. 13. Oxford University Press, 423–456.
- For a selection of entries from the lists, see Rubenhold, Hallie (2005a). Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies. Stroud: Tempus Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-0-7524-3546-6.
- For an online version of the 1786 edition see (1786) Harris' List of Covent Garden Ladies.
- For an online version of the 1787 and 1788 editions see Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies. Wellcome Library.
- For an online version of the 1788 edition in plain text see Harris' List of Covent Garden Ladies. Gutenberg.
- For an online version of the 1789 edition see (1789) Harris' List of Covent Garden Ladies.
- For an online version of the 1793 edition see (1793) Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies Introduction to the Ex-Classics Edition. exclassics.com.
- For the 1788 version mapped see Romantic London.
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