Whore Biographies 1700–1825, ed. by Julie Peakman (review)

177 do not know. Deborah Heller Western New Mexico University Whore Biographies 1700–1825, ed. and introd. Julie Peakman. Part 1: Volumes 1–4. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2006. Pp. 1665. £350; $595. Pickering & Chatto has established such a solid reputation for carefully produced facsimile and transcribed editions of primary materials that it is hardly a surprise to find that the succinctly— if bluntly—titled Whore Biographies 1700–1825 contains far more than the provocative name implies. Ms. Peakman has assembled a wide-ranging collection of writings by and about prostitutes in the eighteenth century, many not previously available outside of archives. The reproduced material has value for work on questions of gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century and has equal, if less obvious, importance for generic development , as many of the memoirs ape the style of novels, and vice versa. Ms. Peakman carefully draws attention to these connections as she situates this subgenre within larger traditions. The first two volumes, which carry the reader to 1757, are varied; the others focus more on the biographies themselves . (In fact, volumes 3, 6, 7, and 8 are each dedicated to a single memoir.) The initial volumes, on the other hand, cover content from criticism to selfdefense . Roughly half of the first two volumes are not biographies at all but attacks on prostitution or defenses thereof . The first volume closes with Mandeville ’s A Modest Defense of the Publick Stews and the anonymous A Modest Defence of Chastity, a pairing that aptly indicates the careful balance of the material . Throughout her presentation of companion pieces to the biographies, Ms. Peakman emphasizes the surprising moments of authorial sympathy for prostitutes along with highlighting some of the underlying reasons for the more common stance of excoriating them, such as prevailing stereotypes of feminine behavior. Her guidance helps the reader place the selections in a larger historical, literary, and social context. Likewise, the footnotes, though keyed only to page number and not specific words, identify period usage and allusions . While the material itself is unassailably interesting in and of itself and of great use to scholars, there are a few infelicities in the apparatus that accompanies the primary sources. Ms. Peakman presents the reader with much information, but at times her Introduction and Head Notes are paradoxically weakened by this embarrassment of riches. The profusion of details overwhelms the reader, and Ms. Peakman is not always able to marshal her stores of information in a clear line of argument. There are enough such organizational missteps that the reader is forced to work harder than necessary to make sense of it all. All of the written texts included clearly contribute to the richness of the collection ; the selection of illustrations is more uneven. Ms. Peakman includes and makes reference to plates I and V from Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress, an admirable way to illustrate her subject matter. However, her references to the images are cursory at best. Having gone to the trouble to reproduce the engravings , it is a shame that they are not used more fully; these images are, after all, among the best known examples of a whore’s biography we have from that 178 time. More puzzling is Ms. Peakman’s offhanded claim in a footnote: in A Rake’s Progress, Tom Rakewell’s cast mistress, the long-suffering Sarah Young, becomes a ‘‘brazen prostitute.’’ Such an unusual interpretation merits elaboration. Likewise, Hogarth’s ‘‘Before ’’ from the interior Before and After is included, but with no apparent connection to the text. Other graphics are put to better use; the inclusion of portraits of the women themselves is a compelling way to underscore that these texts are frequently the stories of real women, and the discussion of an illustration from an 1874 edition of a French translation of Mandeville’s A Modest Defense of the Public Stews draws connections between image and subject matter. With only one exception in these four volumes, the text is clean and easy to read. One account has been transcribed because the original was barely legible, and one more perhaps should have been; the text of The Life of the Late Celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth Wisebourn is bent...