Harriette Wilson

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Standard Name: Wilson, Harriette
Birth Name: Harriette Dubouchet
Self-constructed Name: Wilson
Self-constructed Name: Lamb
Married Name: Harriette Rochfort
HW turned her career as an early nineteenth-century courtesan to good practical use as a memoirist and writer of scandal fiction: though she shows genuine literary talent, the primary aim of her writing was blackmail. She also wrote drama and verse.
Harriette Wilson, in a stipple engraving by James Thompson from a painting by George Clint, published 1821 and in her "Memoirs", vol. 1, 1825. The print includes the words "from an original painting in her collection," and reproduces her signature. She looks sexy yet not ungenteel: her short, dark, curly hair has a prominent kiss-curl; her dress has a high, lacy collar, low neckline with pearls, and semi-transparent fabric over her breasts. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Mary Stockdale
MS went to the same school in London as Harriette Wilson
This was not the Newcastle school which Wilson likened to a prison.
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Stockdale
His specialities were scandal, pornography, and blackmail. He was an attacker of the alleged profiteer Mary Anne Clarke , and claimed to have given her protector the Duke of York the idea of getting hold...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Gunning
EG was already rumoured to be engaged to her cousin the Marquess of Lorne , heir to her uncle the Duke of Argyll ; Lorne, like her, was not yet twenty.
He later became a...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Caroline Lamb
She told Sydney Morgan she had her first experience of falling in love at twelve.
Morgan, Sydney Owenson, Lady. Lady Morgan’s Memoirs. Editors Dixon, William Hepworth and Geraldine Jewsbury, AMS Press, 1975, 2 vols.
2: 212
She had a passion for William Lamb, yet was at first reluctant to marry him because she felt...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Margravine of Anspach
Her eldest son later acquired notoriety in the first sentence of Harriette Wilson 's Memoirs, 1825: I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the...
Friends, Associates Henry Peter Baron Brougham
Brougham had a number of friends among women writers. He was at primary school in Edinburgh with Susan Ferrier (who, however, declined to acknowledge him later, probably for political reasons). His political work brought him...
Intertextuality and Influence Germaine Greer
The work is divided into two parts, The Obstacles and How They Ran. The obstacles begin with Family, Love, and the Illusion of Success, and end with the Disappearing Oeuvre. This conceptual organization, as...
Literary responses Lady Caroline Lamb
From the date of Byron's death, LCL lived with a constant succession of revelations in celebrity memoirs, which often contained something hurtful to herself. Thomas Medwin , whom she respected as a truth-teller, printed an...
Publishing Angela Thirkell
In 1930, once she was back in England, she found she could earn her living by journalism for Punch and the Fortnightly Review. She was attuned to writing by women from an early stage...
Publishing Nina Hamnett
Its publication was marked by an exhibition of NH 's drawings and paintings at the Zwemmer Gallery in Litchfield Street, London. The opening, on 8 June, was attended by many of NH 's friends...
Textual Production Angela Thirkell
AT published The Fortunes of Harriette, a life of courtesan-memoirist Harriette Wilson .
Strickland, Margot. Angela Thirkell: Portrait of a Lady Novelist. Duckworth, 1977.
175, 104-5
Textual Production George Paston
GP had discovered these letters—written by, among others, Elizabeth Pigot , Lady Caroline Lamb , Augusta Leigh , Lady Melbourne , Annabella Milbanke , Claire Clairmont , and the actresses Susan Boyce and Mrs Spencer...
Textual Production Lady Caroline Lamb
Nathan included LCL 's Lines to Harriet Wilson in the final pages of his Fugitive Pieces, 1829, although the family of Lady Caroline's husband had paid to prevent their printing. (Nathan then compared LCL
Textual Production Mary Wesley
The woman who later wrote as MW , having lived a colourful life, and drafted books but never yet published at book length, began writing her memoirs, modelling herself on such scandal memoirists as Harriette Wilson .
Marnham, Patrick. Wild Mary: the Life of Mary Wesley. Chatto and Windus, 2006.
182
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Jenkins
The ten women here share varying degrees and varying combinations of sexual, political, or literary notoriety. Two of them—Elizabeth Inchbald and Lady Blessington —hold the status of professional authors. Two more—Becky Wells (whom...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Wilson, Harriette. Clara Gazul. J. J. Stockdale, 1830, 3 vols.
Wilson, Harriette. “Editorial Materials”. The Blackmailing of the Chancellor, edited by Kenneth Bourne, Lemon Tree Press, 1975, p. Various pages.
Wilson, Harriette. HW, Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, 1831. Revised and expanded ed., J. J. Stockdale, 1831, 9 vols.
Wilson, Harriette. Memoirs of Harriette Wilson. J. J. Stockdale, 1825, 4 vols.
Wilson, Harriette. Paris Lions and London Tigers. J. J. Stockdale, 1825.