Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans

I love this title, for all its evocative resonance. The subtitle of the book is "The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth Century Courtesans." I loved the sense of peeking into another society's underpinnings and how sexuality operated in that time. Four very different stories of four very different woman, some of whom were contemporaries. A delightful read. And the book has quite a tantalizing cover...

Fascinating stories, and very well researched. No great, surprising conclusions about the role of courtesans in Napoleonic France, but an entertaining and informative read nonetheless.

This book follows the lives and professional careers of four demi-mondaines, courtesans of Napoleon III's Paris. Well researched, and well written, the book is occasionally choppy as the author appears to struggle with when to bring their stories together, and when to focus on each story individually. Definitely worth the time to read.

Suffers a little next to Katie Hickman's "Courtesans"; there's a little overlap, particularly with Cora Pearl and La Paiva, but Rounding sticks more to courtesans in Paris (one of them English), while Hickman focuses on English courtesans (some in Paris). Rounding directly quotes more frequently, and yet somehow gives less information than Hickman does, I don't know. Still worth the read.