{"title":"Katie Hickman","description":"Katie Hickman was born into a diplomatic family in 1969 and has spent more than twenty-five years living abroad in Europe, the Far East and Latin America. She is the author of the bestselling Daughters of Britannia. She has also been short listed for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for A Trip to the Light Fantastic, to be reissued as Travels with a Circus and was short listed for the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year for her novel The Quetzal Summer.","products":[{"product_id":"courtesans-paperback","title":"Courtesans - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Irresistible...history at its most human. Elegant and addictively readable.' William Dalrymple\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDuring the course of the 18th- and 19th-century a small group of women rose from impoverished obscurity to positions of great power, independence and wealth. In doing so they took control of their lives - and those of other people - and made the world do their will.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMen ruined themselves in desperate attempts to gain and retain a courtesan's favours, but she was always courted for far more than sex. In an age in which women were generally not well educated she was often unusually literate and literary, courted for her conversation as well as her physical company. Courtesans were extremely accomplished, and exerted a powerful influence as leaders of fashion and society. They were not received at Court, but inhabited their own parallel world - the demi-monde - complete with its own hierarchies, etiquette and protocol. They were queens of fashion, linguists, musicians, accomplished at political intrigue and, of course, possessors of great erotic gifts. Even to be seen in public with one of the great courtesans was a much-envied achievement.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn 'Courtesans' Katie Hickman, author of the bestselling 'Daughters of Britannia', focuses on the exceptional stories of five outstanding women. Sophia Baddeley, Elizabeth Armistead, Harriette Wilson, Cora Pearl and Catherine Walters may have had very different personalities and talents, but their lives exemplify the dazzling existence of the courtesan.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51365564055775,"sku":"9780007113927","price":17.26,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/avIa14ghb59780007113927.webp?v=1789066383"},{"product_id":"brave-hearted-the-women-of-the-american-west-hardcover","title":"Brave Hearted: The Women of the American West - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e*WINNER OF THE WOMEN WRITING THE WEST 2023 WILLA LITERARY AWARD*\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eBrave Hearted\u003c\/em\u003e is not just history, it is an incredibly intense page-turning experience. To read what these women endured is to be transported into another universe of courage, loss, pain, and occasionally victory. This book is a triumph.\"--Amanda Foreman\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAbsolutely compelling.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e--Christina Lamb, \u003cem\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/em\u003e (UK)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe dramatic, untold stories of the diverse array of women who helped transform the American West.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eHard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys, some of them so poor they walked the entire route; African-American women in search of freedom from slavery; Chinese sex-workers sold openly on the docks of San Francisco; Native American women brutally displaced by the unstoppable tide of white settlers - these were the women who settled the American West, whose stories until now have remained mostly untold. As the internationally bestselling historian Katie Hickman writes, \"Myth and misunderstanding spring from the American frontier as readily as rye grass from sod, and--like the wiry grass--seem as difficult to weed out and discard.\" But the true-life story of women's experiences in the Wild West is more gripping, heart-rending, and stirring than all the movies, novels, folk-legends, and ballads of popular imagination.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on letters, diaries, and other extraordinary contemporary accounts, sifting through the legends and the myths, the laws and the treaties, Katie Hickman presents us with a cast of unforgettable women, all forced to draw on huge reserves of resilienceand courage in the face of tumultuous change: the half Cree, Marguerite McLoughlin, the much-admired \"First Lady\" of Fort Vancouver; the Presbyterian missionary Narcissa Whitman, who in 1837 became the first white woman to make the overland journey west across the Rocky Mountains; Biddy Mason, the Mississippi slave who fought for her freedom through the courts of California; Olive Oatman, adopted by the Mohave, famous for her facial tattoos.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is the story of the women who participated in the greatest mass migration in American history, transforming their country in the process. This is American history not as it was romanticized but as it was lived.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51375545614559,"sku":"9781954118171","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/JrK4bx1sAq9781954118171.webp?v=1789203703"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/katie-hickman.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}