#slammerkin

[appleinducedsleep]

It seemed to him that there was some urgency in the air, but then he always felt like that in February: a sense of something breaking out through his skin.

Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin

[escapeintothepages]

“All she'd done was clung on to her life like a spar from a shipwreck. Better to be hardened than crushed to nothing.”

Slammerkin, Emma Donoghue

[aquotecollection]

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

Slammerkin, Emma Donoghue

[nellygwyn]

Most of the girls picked a beat and worked it, but Doll said that was tedious stuff. 'The whole city's our bawdy house, my lass,' she crowed. Mary was coming to learn that men were easy, in the end: not worth being afraid of. Doll showed her where to find them and when they were ripe for the picking. Mary took strangers against walls, in taverns, in rented rooms; clerks blind with drink on the Strand; rich Bishopgate Jews restless after sunset on Saturday; young bucks reeling out of Almack's after losing hundreds at brag.

Mary was a free woman now, with more money in her pocket than she'd ever seen in her life before. She dressed in the brightest colours she could find on the stalls of Monmouth Street - pinks and purples and oranges - and never cared if they clashed, so long as the cullies kept looking. She knew herself to be wanted. She wore her rouged face like a carnival mask.

~ Slammerkin // Emma Donoghue

[the-dust-jacket]

Harlots, Hulu’s tale of intrigue, power struggles and family drama in feuding 18th century brothels, is campy, complex, raunchy, gorgeously made and completely addicting. It’s a bawd’s-eye-view of a colorful and ruthless slice of London, and the women who are determined to carve a out a place in a city where all the rules are stacked against them. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a second season to binge, but in the mean time we’ve got plenty of books about sex, politics, rogues, and harlots. 

Mistress of My Fate, by Hallie Rubenhold 

A young woman raised among nobility and turned out on the street fights to shape her own life as a courtesan, gambler, and intellect 

The Convenient Marriage, by Georgette Heyer

A frothy comedy of the haute ton and the demimonde of Georgian London, complete with highwaymen, balls, cardsharps and duels 

Slammerkin, by Emma Donoghue

A prostitute-turned-seamstress explores all the ways in which power is an illusion and illusion is power

The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson 

The rapidly changing world of the Enlightenment, as seen through the eyes of outlaws, concubines, natural philosophers, politicians and moneylenders 

The Fatal Tree, by Jake Arnott 

Thieves and thief-takers, lovers and rogues and prostitutes bring an 18th century scandal to life 

The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber 

A sensory-heavy, panoramic story of Victorian society and a young prostitute climbing her way up it 

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, by Mackenzi Lee

If he doesn’t mend his libertine ways, Monty’s father will disown him. But the rakish young aristocrat has big plans for his Grand Tour--and his not-terribly-secret crush on his best friend Percy. 

The Lady In Red, by Hallie Rubenhold 

The history of one of the 18th century’s most infamous scandals, the marriage and divorce of the larger-than-life Lady Worsley 

An Almond for a Parrot, by Wray Delaney 

A quirky, dreamlike tale of sex, food, and murder 

Sex With Kings and Sex With the Queen, by Eleanor Herman 

Entertaining histories of royal consorts and concubines through the ages

Faro’s Daughter, by Georgette Heyer

A battle of wits between a dashing gambling house hostess and a proud London gentleman against a backdrop of scandal, seduction, double-crosses and dastardly plots

[appleinducedsleep]

Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.

Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin

[appleinducedsleep]

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin

[appleinducedsleep]

Was that hard-hearted? Well, so what if it was. She'd been through enough to harden anyone. It was none of her choosing; all she'd done was clung on to her life like a spar from a shipwreck. Better to be hardened than crushed to nothing.

Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin