SynopsisThe gripping story of an early media celebrity, and her journey from rags to riches and back again, via prostitution Fanny Murray (1729-1770) was a famous Georgian beauty and courtesan, desired throughout England and often to be found pressed to a gentleman's heart in the form of a printed disc secretly tucked into their pocket-watch. She rose from life in the "London stews" (brothels) to fame and fortune, through her career as a high-class courtesan. Her Memoirs (the first "whore biography"--included in this book) records her eventful life in detail. She was seduced and then abandoned, aged just 12, by Jack Spencer, grandson of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Her luck turned when she caught the eye of the infamous Beau Nash, "King of Bath." But it was her return to London that promoted her to national fame and notoriety. After 10 years at the top, she was heavily in debt, and after some devious manipulation of the Marlborough family, she managed to secure an arranged marriage to a respectable man. The scandals of her past caught up with her as she was named in the national scandal surrounding Wilke's pornography case at the High Court., Fanny Murray was an incomparable Georgian beauty and the most desired courtesan of the 1750s. The daughter of an impoverished musician from Bath, she took London society by storm, not only as the most prized 'purchaseable beauty' of her day, but also as a fashion icon and muse to poets, writers and artists.She counted princes, aristocrats and politicians among her friends and lovers, but relished the company of rogues, fraudsters and ne'er-do-wells. Barbara White presents evidence to suggest that Fanny Murray participated spiritedly in the sexual antics of the notorious 'Monks of Medmenham', the most infamous of the Hell-fire Clubs. After she retired from prostitution, Fanny Murray reinvented herself, entering a pragmatic marriage with the Scottish actor David Ross. Surprisingly, her virtues as a devoted and faithful wife became almost proverbial. Even so, Murray could not escape her disreputable past. In 1763, a scurrilous poem dedicated to her caused a national scandal that ended in the infamous trial of the radical politician John Wilkes for obscene libel.Barbara White's portrait of Fanny Murray takes readers from the brothels of Covent Garden to sex romps at Medmenham Abbey, from refined drawing rooms in London to marital respectability in Edinburgh. This is an illuminating contribution to the scholarly understanding and popular appreciation of a complex and intriguing period of British history. Fanny Murray's triumph - against almost insuperable odds - is a remarkable story, as rich in the telling as it is enthralling.
LC Classification NumberDA501