The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in Nineteenth-Century France (1967)

Product Description
In Second Empire Paris there were a dozen courtesans who were generally known as la garde: they were the queens of their profession, the women whom visiting princes thought it essential to see. They were the women who encrusted their bathroom taps with jewels, built palaces in the Champs-Elysees, fought duels in the Bois de Boulogne. They scandalised society and influenced the Press and politics. They also ensnared the husbands and lovers of the most beautiful women in Paris. Joanna Richardson presents her own version of la garde - twelve of the most distinguished courtesans in Paris during their golden age. From the calculating Cora Pearl to the hideous la Paiva, who rose from the Moscow ghetto to indecent wealth and fame, and the admirable Madame Sabatier made famous by Baudelaire, to La Castiglione sent by Cavour to seduce Napoleon III, la garde people these pages with all the colour, intrigue, scandal and vivacity with which they peopled the demi-monde of 19th century Paris.

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This book was written nearly 30 years previous to the Hickman book, and is completely different in style and readability. It focuses on 12 courtesans and the treatment of each is much more concise than in the Hickman book. Oddly, given the title, I did not get much of a feel for the world in which these women existed. It focuses very tightly on their lives, and did not venture far to provide a setting for those lives. It did give an excellent idea of what these women were like, the fire and spark that made them independent in a way few people today can really understand. Read together with the Hickman book, you get an excellent idea of what the time period was like. ( )