title: The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues
author:  Susan Griffin 
description: Poet and writer Susan Griffin is famously provocative, though her provocation takes very different forms, ranging from her classic feminist treatise, <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578050472/${0}">Women and Nature</a></i>, which linked patriarchy with the oppression of women and nature, to her well-received <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/038541885X/${0}">A Chorus of Stones</a></i>, which weighed in on the nature of war. But in <i>The Book of Courtesans</i>, Griffin is downright scintillating. Courtesans, she writes, were not prostitutes nor even kept women, though certainly they used their sexuality to financial gain. Rather, they were personages and celebrities, friends to royalty and the most famous writers and artists of their time, the subjects of gossip, the charismatic epicenter of the Second Empire, the Gay Nineties, the Belle Epoche, "Gay Paree." Their faces were immortalized in paintings by the Renaissance masters, by Degas, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, their lives by Proust, Balzac, Zola, Flaubert. They lived in splendor, set fashion standards, owned fabulous jewelry collections. And they were talented authors, poets, actresses, and singers. In a time of prescribed roles for women, they turned the tables, creating lives of remarkable intellectual and financial freedom.
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  ![](Images/9780795315107_cvi.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
    
    
  
  
  **Refining Felicity**
  
  
  A Novel of Regency England  
  Being the First Volume of The School for Manners
  
  
    
    
    
  
  
  M. C. Beaton/ Marion Chesney
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **Copyright**
  
  
    
    
    
  
  
  Refining Felicity
  
  
  Copyright © 1988 by Marion Chesney  
  Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2010 by RosettaBooks, LLC
  
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
  manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
  quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
  
  
  First electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.  
  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795315107
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
    
  
  
  For Thelma Osmani
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Contents
  
  
    
    
  
  
  [Chapter One](9780795315107_epub_c01_r1.htm)
  
  
  [Chapter Two](9780795315107_epub_c02_r1.htm)
  
  
  [Chapter Three](9780795315107_epub_c03_r1.htm)
  
  
  [Chapter Four](9780795315107_epub_c04_r1.htm)
  
  
  [Chapter Five](9780795315107_epub_c05_