Many of you know how much I love maps, and while writing The Widow’s Wager, I began to chart the locations of all my fictional houses in my two Regency romance series.

Horwood’s Plan is a map of London from the Regency era. The full name of it is: Richard Horwood’s PLAN of the Cities of LONDON and WESTMINSTER the Borough of SOUTHWARK, and PARTS adjoining Shewing every HOUSE (1792-99).

It really does show individual buildings, which is pretty cool.

You can also access the map online. This is an interactive map, so you can scale it and scroll it to focus on whatever detail you wish to see. I can lose days with this tool!

You’ll find it right here.

The other fabulous thing about this map is that there are overlays available. You can, for example, choose the overlay for Harris’s List to Covent Garden Ladies, right here, to see the locations of the various ladies’ residences. Hovering over a pin will bring up the listing for that lady from the guide published in 1788.

There are more overlays as well, if you’re in the mood to explore.

In The Widow’s Wager, Miss Esmeralda Ballantyne introduces Eurydice and Catherine to a scandalous little volume and guide to the Cyprians of Regency London called Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies.

Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies was a real publication, printed in London from 1757 through 1795, being updated most years. It was a guide to prostitutes and courtesans, complete with their names—perhaps with one letter missing—and addresses, as well as notes upon appearance, specialities and prices. The excerpts that Catherine and Eurydice read in the prologue are from editions of the guide.



The volume was originally compiled by Samuel Derrick, a linen draper from Dublin who came to London to pursue his dream of becoming an actor, dramatist and famed poet. In London, Derrick frequented The Shakespear’s Head, a coffeehouse in Covent Garden, whose chief waiter, one John Harrison, called himself the Pimp-General of All England. Inspired by this procurer’s own notes on the local ladies, Derrick created and published his own volume when in desperate need of money. There was likely an agreement with Jack Harris for the use of his name—although he subsequently published a competing title, which was not a success — although Derrick used his own observations. Derrick’s contribution remained anonymous for decades. It was a very popular little volume and it was believed to have sold 8000 copies per year in the 1760s. After Derrick’s death in 1769, the book continued to be updated by others, until its publication was ceased in 1795.



Hallie Rubenhold has written about this book—Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies: Sex in the City in Georgian Britain—as well as 18th century courtesans like Charlotte Hayes in The Covent Garden Ladies.