Harriette Wilson's Memoirs

Read the most by: boys and girls

Nineteenth century London produced a fine flowering of eccentrics and individualists. Chief among them was Harriette Wilson, whose patrons included most of the distinguished men of the day, from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Byron. She held court in a box at the opera, attended by statesmen, poets, national heroes, aristocrats, members of the beau monde, and students who hoped to be immortalised by her glance.She wrote these memoirs in middle age, when she had fallen out of favour. She advised her former lovers that for GBP200 she would edit them out. 'Publish and be damned!' retorted the Duke of Wellington.The result is an elegant, zestful, unrepentant memoir, which offers intimately detailed portraits of the Regency demimonde.