Hardcover. Navy cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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For conditions, please view photographs. A nice clean copy from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG.

Harriette Wilson (2 February 1786 – 10 March 1845) was an English courtesan and writer. The author of The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson: Written by Herself (1825), she was a famed Regency era courtesan who became the mistress of the Earl of Craven at the age of 15. Later in her career, she went on to have formal relationship arrangements with the Duke of Wellington and other prominent people. Wilson began her career at the age of fifteen, becoming the mistress of William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven, 7th Baron Craven. Among her other lovers with whom she had financial arrangements was Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, who reportedly commented “publish, and be damned” when informed of her plans to write her memoirs. Wilson even attracted George IV’s attention, who claimed he would “do anything to suppress what Harriette had to reveal of [his mistress] Lady Conyngham”.Wilson makes a claim in her memoir about Frederick Lamb, 3rd Viscount Melbourne, assaulting her. She attributes his violent act toward her to the jealousy that she had become acquainted with the Duke of Argyll and a lover, a Lord Ponsonby. According to her account, Lamb attacked her because she refused him. For obvious reasons, most politicians with whom she had relationships paid high sums to keep their interactions with her private.Her decision to publish was partly based on the broken promises of her lovers to provide her with an income in her older age. The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Written By Herself, first published in 1825, is celebrated for the opening line: “I shall not say how and why I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.”It was reprinted by the Navarre Society in 1924, as was a follow-up title Paris Lions and London Tigers (1825) with an introduction by Heywood Hill in 1935, although how much of this latter title was the work of Harriette Wilson herself is debatable.

Angela Margaret Thirkell (Mackail, 30 January 1890 – 29 January 1961) was an English and Australian novelist. She also published one novel, Trooper to Southern Cross, under the pseudonym Leslie Parker.