Jack Harris and ‘Honest Ranger’: The Publication and Prosecution of Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies, 1760–95

Harris’sList of Covent-Garden Ladies, published annually from 1760 until its suppression in 1794, has long held a place in studies of censorship or the Georgian underworld. In the past few decades it has figured as well in more specialized discussions of the demography of London prostitution and of eighteenth-century perceptions of women, but to date little attention has been paid to the actual publishing history of the List. The present article explores several aspects of that history, beginning with the origin and evolution of Harris’s List, and with those involved in its early stages; subsequent sections survey the marketing of the List and the booksellers who published, stocked, and in one instance pirated it, and finally the 1794–95 proceedings against the final publishers of Harris’s List, James Roach and James Aitken.