This syllabus explores texts from a range of genres to think through the commodification of both literature and bodies via sex work. It turns out people have been writing about sex workers, mostly by pretending to speak in their voices, for a long time. Here I focus mostly on works from the eighteenth century—when mass print culture and capitalism both really started to take off—and from the past 30ish years, another era that’s home to new media forms and permutations of capitalism. The fascination with, distaste for, and desire to hear from sex workers has endured for centuries. And we have the literature to prove it.

Comparing work from these two periods, you’ll find some common themes. One is how a text handles questions of authorship and agency. Sometimes writers speak for sex workers to make a profit off the backs of fictional or actual workers; other times these are attempts to amplify historically marginalized voices. Sometimes we get actual sex workers relating their experiences; sometimes it’s hard to parse the fiction from the facts.

Of course, the novel as a form started its life claiming to tell “true” stories about “real” people. This conceit slowly eroded over the course of the 1700s as fictional work became seen as a valuable form in its own right. So, take all those “based on a true story” claims with a grain of salt. While scholars have been able to piece together some facts about the conditions of early sex work, there is plenty we simply don’t know, in part because the records were lost, burned, or maybe even never existed. Fictionalization can allow authors to take artistic license or protect themselves from legal action, but it also can obscure lived realities with romanticized, sensationalized, or otherwise deeply modified narratives about prostitution and sex work.

Remember that laws about sex work shift over time and across locations, plus 1700s legal frameworks can be tricky to parse. London did not yet have a professional police force (although thief-takers and the Bow Street Runners were steps in that direction); crimes usually were tried on precedents, giving judges and juries “considerable discretion” in how they interpreted common law. Prostitution wasn’t illegal per se, but keeping a brothel or disorderly house was considered a crime. However, the vast majority of sex work happened in the streets. Let’s not forget, this was all happening before Queen Victoria showed up. The definition of what counts as obscenity or what is worthy of being banned also changes. For example, in the 1850s the British Museum began to lock away their erotic printed books. The Private Case materials were separated from the rest of the collection, but today those works are no longer restricted. And even when a book like John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was banned in the eighteenth century, it (and other texts) would continue to be printed and circulated via less public networks.

Some caveats: The term “sex work” was not in use during the 1700s, yet I use it as a catchall term for labor that includes the sale of sex or other services that are sexualized. I sometimes use “prostitute” and “whore” when talking about these earlier works. Most of the content here is from anglophone (US and UK) contexts and represents just a small slice of sex work and its representation across history and the globe.

Contemporary sex workers call for “nothing about us without us,” and the following groupings put older objects in conversation with contemporary pieces by sex workers themselves. Pair them as you see fit or dive into an entire category that catches your interest.

Questions to think about:

• Why do people engage in sex work?
• Why are sex workers’ voices so often left out of the moral and legal conversations about them? What happens when comparing words about sex workers with words by sex workers?
• Just where do the images we have of sex workers come from? How have changes in cultural contexts impacted the views of sex work and sex workers?
• How do conversations about sex work dovetail with race, class, and gender?
• Why is sex work so frequently represented at extremes (workers are either totally empowered or totally disenfranchised)?
• Why does sex always sell, both for sex acts and literary objects?

Whore Dialogues

Usually structured as an experienced prostitute instructing a newcomer to the trade, some see this erotic genre as the earliest form of the pornographic novel. Although these dialogues go back to the classical era, more recent versions date from the 1500s. The most well-known examples were written in Italian, French, or English; they also circulated in translations across national borders, sometimes being reprinted for centuries.

Lucian, The Dialogues of Courtesans (2nd century CE)
These 15 dialogues in classical Greek are exchanges between courtesans (hetairai), including some between these sex workers and their clients. Inspiration for later erotic works that usually feature an older, more experienced woman training a younger novice.

Jean Barrin, Vénus dans le cloître, ou la religieuse en chemise (1683). English translation: Venus in the Cloister: or, The Nun in Her Smock (1725)
A series of dialogues by very sexually active nuns. Lots of random sex scenes—including women having sex with other women—and plenty of flagellation. Memorable moments: a lobster hiding in a chamber pot grabs the abbess’s vulva; a man disguised as a maid servant has sex with basically everyone, then gets discovered when his penis pops up and knocks the abbess’s glasses off. See also L’École des filles (1655) and its English translation The School of Venus (1680) where two women talk about sexual intercourse and marriage, including graphic descriptions of sexual organs, positions, and flagellation. 

Frédérique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander, eds., Sex Work, second edition (1998)
An early collection of sex workers speaking for themselves. Includes interviews with Nell, Debra, and Barbara, who talk about their backgrounds, how they got into sex work, and thoughts on the state of sex work more generally.

Annie Oakley, ed. Working Sex (2007)
See “Whoreanomics” by Shelby Aesthetic, where the experienced Ricca gives new girls on the strip lessons to “make sure every girl got turned out right.”

Matilda Bickers, peech breshears, and Janis Luna, eds., Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex (2023)
Another collection of sex workers speaking for themselves, showcasing a variety of experiences and genres. Includes interviews with Adrie Rose, Sage, Camille, Jelena Vermilion, Manon, Beyondeep, Crystal Kimewon, and Janis Luna about when they learned about selling sex as a way to make money, the work they do, thoughts on the larger sex work community and activism, and “what would make sex workers’ lives better or easier or safer (or all three).”

Prostitute Narratives and Sex Worker Life Stories

Scholars sometimes call this genre “whore biography,” where the (supposedly) true story of a prostitute furnishes the work’s narrative arc. There are very few works actually written by sex workers in the 1700s, although many purported to be.

Daniel Defoe, Roxana (1724)
The second novel Defoe wrote about a woman who falls into prostitution and travels around the world. Roxana tells her story from childhood onwards. She marries a man who abandons her and their five kids, which sends her into a life of prostitution (after also abandoning said kids), first with her landlord and then a series of powerful, wealthy men. Along with her faithful maid/sidekick Amy, Roxana experiences fabulous wealth, independence, many pregnancies, international voyages, and then a terrible end.

John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748)
Framed as two letters written by Fanny Hill to a friend describing how she was tricked into prostitution, where she met her true love. But he was kidnapped, forcing Fanny to continue as a sex worker until they reunite. The many, varied graphic sex scenes led to the arrest of Cleland, his publishers Ralph and Fenton Griffiths, and the printer Thomas Parker, who were charged with publishing an obscene work. The book was banned until the twentieth century (although it was still printed and circulated underground for decades). An abridged version titled Memoirs of Fanny Hill came out in 1750 with all the sex scenes and other morally offensive references (such as those to thighs) omitted. Many people call Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure the “first” pornographic novel in English to highlight its role in printed erotica, but the term “pornography” does not appear in English until 1842. Highlights across its many editions include: women  telling the stories of how they came to sex work in a brothel that’s practically a worker’s collective; imaginative, at times poetic, descriptions of genitals;, and images of acrobatic sexual acts.

Laura Rosenthal, ed., Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century (2008)
This collection of five supposedly true narratives covers texts published across the 1700s, covering libertine sexual excess and sentimental reform narratives. The stories are mostly written about real women, though not by them. Captain Charles Walker crowd-sourced Authentick Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues, and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury (1723) after the arrest of Sally Salisbury for stabbing a client; the result is a sketch of her life and a jumble of anecdotes contributed by men who knew her. The Juvenile Adventures of Miss Kitty F[ishe]r (1759) covers the rise of Kitty Fisher, a celebrity figure in the 1750s, with an array of often-comic adventures.

Teresia Constantia Phillips, An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. T. C. Phillips (1748–9)
A three-volume memoir written by (or at least ghostwritten for) an actual eighteenth-century sex worker, presented as a third-person account. Phillips published her memoirs serially and would exclude stories of clients who were willing to pay her to keep their name out of her story. See also other long-form memoirs, such as Dublin-based brothel keeper Margaret Leeson’s Memoirs of Mrs. Margaret Leeson (1795, three volumes) and Ann Sheldon’s Authentic and Interesting Memoirs of Miss Ann Sheldon (1787, four volumes) for more content in this vein.

Xaviera Hollander, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story (1972)
The former Penthouse advice columnist shares her experiences with the business of sex in 1960s and 70s New York City, which inspired multiple movies and was reissued in 2002.

Charlotte Shane, Prostitute Laundry (2016)
This memoir started as a TinyLetter newsletter, then was made into a book in 2016. Entries reflect Shane’s ongoing journey to figure out her relationship to sex outside of work, along with thoughts on money and identity more generally. Third edition published in 2023.

Liara Roux, Whore of New York: A Confession (2021)
Roux details how they came to sex work, shares experiences with clients, and reflects on its mix of luxury and the banal.

See also:

Intrigue A-la-mode: or, The Covent-Garden Atalantis. Containing the lives, intrigues, fortunate and unfortunate adventures of the most celebrated ladies of that neighbourhood. Together with choice anecdotes of the amours of several of their well-known admirers (1767)

The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen House, as Supposed to be related by Themselves (1760)

Lists

Long before we had classified ads or apps, lists of sex workers were a popular form of printed erotic entertainment that also provided information to men wanting to take advantage of London’s sex trade. Most of these were small enough to carry in a pocket and sometimes included erotic engravings as frontispieces. Their titles usually give a decent overview of the volume’s contents.

A Catalogue of Jilts, Cracks, Prostitutes, Night-Walkers, Whores, She-Friends, Kind Women, and Others of The Linnen-Lifting Tribe, who are to be seen every night in the Cloysters in Smithfield, from the hours of Eight to Eleven, during the time of the fair (1691)

The Countryman’s Guide to London, Or, Villainy detected. Being a clear discovery of all the various tricks and frauds that are daily practiced in that great city. Among many of which, are the following, viz. Highwaymen, or scamps, sharpers, gamblers, kidnappers, waggon-hunters, money-droppers, duffers, setters, pretended friends, mock auctions, register-offices, quacks, bullies, bawds, whores, pimps, jilts, gossips, and fortune-tellers. The whole laid down in so plain and comprehensive a manner, as to enable the most innocent country people to be sufficiently on their guard how to avoid the base impositions of such vile and abandoned artists, who live by robbing and ruining the young and innocent of both sexes. Together with general remarks on the present state and condition of the town, interspersed with useful Admonitions. (c. 1760–70?)

The Covent Garden Magazine; or, Amorous Repository: Calculated solely for the Entertainment of the Polite World and the Finishing of a Young Gentleman’s Education (1772–4)
This monthly periodical includes lists of sex workers as well as longer-form stories, news items, poetry, and letters to the editor.

Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies (1757–93)
This yearly guide to active prostitutes working in late eighteenth-century London started as a handwritten list by a waiter named Harris, then was ghostwritten by at least two other writers over the decades. Sometimes a woman would get a few sentences or a paragraph, other times pages devoted to her backstory. Entries also indicate the kinds of sex acts the woman would do, if she was suffering from venereal disease or currently “in keeping,” and even how much she charged. You can find some freely accessible volumes here, and others volumes held in libraries around the world here.

Compare with:

Craigslist sections Adult Services (shut down in 2010) and Personals (shut down 2018)

Backpage (website shut down in 2018)

See also:

OnlyFans, Seeking Arrangement, Ashley Madison, etc.

Sex Work Is Work: Worker and Client Perspectives

Behind-the-scenes coverage of sex work takes place well beyond traditional narrative forms. Poems, graphic narratives, even television series offer representations of the work that sex work requires. Unlike narratives that aim to portray sex workers at the extremes (super-sexual, liberated beings or downtrodden victims of circumstance in need of rescue), here we find explorations of the daily grind, the funny, the grim, and even the boring.

Johnathan Swift, “The Lady’s Dressing Room” (1732)
Strephon snoops around in Celia’s dressing room and makes the shocking discovery that she is, in fact, a human who generates dirty laundry, uses beauty products, and is subject to other bodily functions. All in a poem with rhyming couplets. Look out for “Repeating in his amorous Fits,” and its following line.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to write a Poem called ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’” (1734)
A response poem to Swift’s, where Dr. S (a.k.a. Swift) comes to Betty’s and pays for sex, but is unable to perform. Frustrated, Betty sends him away and says she won’t return his money, so he promises to get revenge by writing about her dressing room. Iconic closing lines give Betty the last word.

Chester Brown, Paying for It: A comic-strip memoir about being a john (2011)
Brown’s memoir from the perspective of a consumer/client includes simple panels and sparse drawings and with multiple heavily researched appendixes and notes. The narrative attempts to engage with multiple perspectives and give voice to the sex workers, not just represent Brown’s experiences. Even if you don’t agree with his visions for sexual norms in the future, the work helps complicate the typical representation of sex workers as either victim or agent.

Sylvie Rancourt, Mélody: Story of a Nude Dancer (2015)
Sylvie Rancourt worked as a stripper in Montreal in the 1980s, when she wrote and distributed these comics in French. Her work has been compared to Marjane Sartarpi’s Persepolis in style; she also won some major accolades for both the French (2013) and English (2015) language collections. Another depiction of sex work as labor done by humans while not glossing over human inconsistencies.

See also:

Collections mentioned above such as Sex Work, Working It, and Working Sex

Harlots, 3 seasons (2017–2019) on Hulu
*NB: Research and writing done by Hallie Rubenbold on Harris’s List was a major inspiration for this series about two dueling brothels in 1760s London.

Educational

Framing a piece as “educational” is an old trick for explaining why all those erotic details are really necessary to include. Compare this conceit with more recent work that actually wants to improve sex work for practitioners and clients alike.

The London Jilt; or, The Politick Whore (1683)
Narrated by Cornelia, the text follows her life ostensibly to teach young men the tricks that whores use so that they can avoid these women’s snares. By the end Cornelia instructs a young woman in “those things which a Lady of Pleasure ought to know,” and talks about writing a book of these lessons. Readers might ask just who is she teaching and why?

Greta Christina, ed. Paying for It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients (2004)
As Christina explains in the introduction, this book is “somewhere between a consumer guide and an etiquette manual for sex work customers.” All the contributors have sex work experience, covering dos and don’ts for interacting with prostitutes, strippers, dancers, visiting a local dungeon, having phone sex, or scheduling sessions with a pro dom.

Anti-Prostitution Narratives, Moral Panics, and Reality Checks

Moral panics about sex trafficking and the prevalence of prostitution are, sadly, nothing new. Neither is inflating the numbers, increasing the rhetorical stakes, or otherwise attempting to divert resources to what Laura Agustín calls the “rescue industry.”

Some Considerations Upon Street-Walkers, with a Proposal for lessening the present Number of Them (1726)
Framed as two letters to a member of parliament, the writer quickly explains how he is harassed by sex workers across London when he walks the streets at night. Later comes a discussion of how other cities handle sex workers, the value of women’s labor, and then a historical survey of how ancient societies handled those who brought “vice to the community.”

Father Poussin, Pretty Doings in a Protestant Nation, Being a view of the present state of fornication, whorecraft, and adultery, in Great-Britain, and the territories and dependencies thereunto belonging (1734)
Another polemic, this treatise outlines just why there are so many “courtezans” on the streets of London, causing the town to be “overstock’d with Harlots.”

Laura Agustín, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (2007)
An excellent, researched breakdown of the fantasy of sex trafficking, exploring how sex laborers are often marginalized as victims without any agency that are in need of rescue by, well, you name it. Agustín digs into the anti-trafficking discourse, demonstrating its parallels with earlier moral movements and showing the problems with how statistics and other information about migrants doing sex work is skewed.

See also:

Melissa Gira Grant, Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (2014)

Juno Mac and Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights (2020)

Further Recommended Reading and Syllabi

On more contemporary sex work and workers:

Heather Berg, Angela Jones, and PJ Patella-Rey, Sex Worker Syllabus and Toolkit for Academics (ongoing)

Support Ho(s)e Collective, Sex Work Syllabus (2015–2018) and Sex Work Centered Guide for Academics (2021)

Carisa Renae Showden and Samantha Majic, eds. Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism (2014)

Nicola Smith, Mary Laing, and Katy Pilcher, eds., Queer Sex Work (2015)

Rachel Eliyanna Kaiser Aimee and Audacia Ray, $Pread: The Best of the Magazine that Illuminated the Sex Industry and Started a Media Revolution (2015)

[I would include some Twitter/X suggestions here such as SWOP-USA, Whores of Yore, and other specific sex workers/writer accounts (many of them are listed above), but that app might not exist by the time you’ve read this far…]

On eighteenth-century prostitution and sex work history:

Dan Cruickshank, London’s Sinful Secret: The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London’s Georgian Age (2009)

Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (2012)

Tony Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 (1999)

Kevin Bourque, “Heady Similitudes: Kitty Fisher, Mezzotint Culture, and Material Narratives of Celebrity, ca. 1750” Eighteenth-Century Studies 54, no. 2 (2021): 307–36.