'a lively essay collection ... the book offers multiple perspectives on the phenomenon of prostitution and the figure of the prostitute.' The Year's Work in English Studies

• Introduction: Venal Bodies – Prostitutes and Eighteenth-Century Culture, Markman Ellis, Ann Lewis; Chapter 1 Classifying the Prostitute in Eighteenth-Century France, Ann Lewis; Chapter 2 In Her Own Words: an Eighteenth-Century Madam Tells Her Story, Kathryn Norberg; Chapter 3 ‘All the World Knows Her Storie’: Aphra Behn and the Duchess of Mazarin, Claudine van Hensbergen; Chapter 4 Marie Petit’s Persian Adventure (1705–8): the Eastward Travels of a French ‘Concubine’, Katherine MacDonald; Chapter 5 ‘A First-rate Whore’: Prostitution and Empowerment in the Early Eighteenth Century, Lena Olsson; Chapter 6 Prostitutes and Erotic Performances in Eighteenth-Century Paris, Thomas Wynn; Chapter 7 Visible Prostitutes: Mandeville, Hogarth and ‘A Harlot’s Progress’, Charlotte Grant; Chapter 8 The Narrative Sources of Candide’s Paquette, Edward Langille; Chapter 9 The Prostitute as Neo-Manager: Sade’s Juliette and the New Spirit of Capitalism, Olivier Delers; Chapter 10 Figuring the London Magdalen House: Mercantilist Hospital, Sentimental Asylum or Proto-Evangelical Penitentiary?, Mary Peace; Chapter 11 Mothers and Others: Sexuality and Maternity in the Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen-House (1760), Jennie Batchelor; Chapter 12 Making a Living by ‘Indecency’: Life Stories of Prostitutes in Christiania, Norway, Johanne Bergkvist; Chapter 13 Male Prostitution and the Emergence of the Modern Sexual System: Eighteenth-Century London, Randolph Trumbach;