If I had to recommend just one book from this list I would suggest Lord Hervey’s memoirs. Hours of malicious, scandalous fun. But I don’t have to, so would recommend them all.
Contemporary sources
–, A Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the State of the Gaols of this Kingdom. With the Resolutions and Orders of the House of Commons thereupon, 1729.
–, The Tryal of William Acton, Friday 1 and Saturday 2 August 1729
Defoe, Daniel, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain
Ginger, John (ed.), Handel’s Trumpeter – The Diary of John Grano, 1728–9
Mudge, Bradford K. (ed.), When Flesh Becomes Word: An Anthology of Early Eighteenth-Century Libertine Literature
de Saussure, César, A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I & George II
Sedgwick, Romney (ed.), Lord Hervey’s Memoirs
Secondary sources
Borman, Tracy, Henrietta Howard
Buck, Anne, Dress in Eighteenth-Century England
Cruickshank, Dan, The Secret History of Georgian London
George, M. Dorothy, London Life in the Eighteenth Century
Moore, Lucy, Amphibious Thing: The Life of a Georgian Rake
Moore, Lucy, Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld
Peakman, Julie, Lascivious Bodies: a Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century
Porter, Roy, English Society in the Eighteenth Century
Porter, Roy, Enlightenment
Stead, Jennifer, Georgian Cookery (English Heritage series)
Styles, John, The Dress of the People
Vickery, Amanda, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England
Worsley, Lucy, Courtiers: The Secret History of Kensington Palace
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly I would like to thank both Jo Unwin and Clare Conville for their brilliant encouragement and help. Big thanks to Carrie Plitt and to everyone at Conville & Walsh – especially Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Henna Silvennoinen and Alexandra McNicoll.
Joint firstly (this is allowed, I’ve decided) – thanks to my publisher Nick Sayers for his tireless support and brilliant editorial guidance. Also to Laura Macdougall, Alasdair Oliver, Kerry Hood, Ellen Wood and the whole team at Hodder for everything.
My US publisher Andrea Schulze provided thoughtful and perceptive notes that really made a difference – I am very grateful both to her and her team at Houghton Mifflin.
Thanks to the staff at the British Library – especially for not looking at me in a funny way when I ordered up a multi-volume collection of eighteenth-century erotica. It was for research. It was for research. It was for research. (What I tell you three times is true.)
Thanks to Richard Beswick for being a thoroughly bene cove. To David Shelley for his support and good humour. To Luigi Bonomi for his very useful and thoughtful advice. To Ant, Vic and the Kirstys for their fine company and kindness. To Jo Dickinson, Harrie Evans, Lance Fitzgerald, John O’Connell and Andrew Wille for friendship and wise counsel. Very special thanks to Rowena and Ian for all this and their incredible hospitality. And a low bow with a flourish to my parents and my sisters Kay, Michelle and Debbie.
I’m grateful to everyone at Little, Brown for their encouragement – especially Ursula Mackenzie, Cath Burke, Hannah Boursnell, Sean Garrehy, Clare Smith and Adam Strange.
Finally, thanks and eternal gratitude to my very dear friend Ursula Doyle for her loyalty, generosity and regular trips to the tavern.
The Devil in the Marshalsea Page 36