Barbara White will be at The Bath Preservation Society, Royal Crescent, Bath on Thursday 10th July holding a launch for her new book, Queen of the Courtesans: Fanny Murray.
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. 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.