9. One High-Class Mistress Wrote an NSFW Tell-All
Harriette Wilson was a mistress to numerous famous and wealthy men in Regency England. After several of her paramours failed to provide her with decent financial support, as was expected at the time, she wrote a tell-all book called The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson: Written by Herself, which caused a massive scandal by naming and shaming numerous high-ranking men. The two-volume autobiography details affairs with no less than the Duke of Wellington, the foreign secretary, various other nobles including new dukes, and even the Prince Regent himself. While she didn’t sleep with the Prince Regent herself, she details an affair for which the Prince was supposed to have provided £20,000 that he never paid.
Harriette Wilson was, by the standards of the era, a courtesan. Many women who became the long-term mistresses of aristocratic men were courtesans who negotiated levels of financial support in exchange for maintaining the relationship. Despite the transfer of funds, the associations were not looked at as prostitution in the era, but instead financially caring for a dependent long-term lover. However, to the courtesans, their affairs were the basis of a career, and any lapse in payment could leave them destitute. It was such lapses in payment that led Wilson to write her book.