Katie Hickman

An examination of the lives of nineteenth-century Britain's demimonde offers insight into the hierarchies, etiquette, and protocols of the period's courtesans, focusing on five women of particular influence as well as the factors that contributed to their social successes and decline. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Money, Sex and Fame in the Nineteenth Century

Courtesans

The Women of the American West

Brave Hearted

A lush, ancient tale of treacherous secrets, forbidden love, and murder in an Ottoman palace. Elizabeth Staveley sits in the Bodleian library, holding in her trembling hands a fragment of ancient paper. It is the key to a story that has been locked away for four centuries—the story of a British sea captain’s daughter held captive in the sultan’s harem. Constantinople, 1599. There are rumors and strange stirrings in the sultan’s palace. The chief black eunuch has been poisoned by a taste of a beautiful ship made of spun sugar. The sultan’s mother faces threats to her power from her son’s favorite concubine, and a secret rebellion is rising within the palace’s most private quarters. Meanwhile, the merchant Paul Pindar, secretary to the English ambassador, brings a precious gift to the sultan. As he nears the palace, word comes to Pindar that the woman he once loved, Celia, may be alive, and hidden among the ranks of slaves in the sultan’s harem. Can this really be the same Celia who disappeared in a shipwreck? And if it is, can the two be reunited? Spellbinding and steeped in mystery and sexual intrigue, The Aviary Gate transports readers to exotic sixteenth-century Constantinople, offering the rarest glimpse into the forbidden confines of the sultan’s harem.

A Novel

The Aviary Gate

The Lives and Times of British Women in India 1600 1900

She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen

Drawing on diaries, memoirs, and personal correspondence, this fascinating study explores the private world of the wives of foreign service diplomats, examining the challenges, hardships, and pageantry of the lives of nearly one hundred women, including Vita Sackville-West, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Lady Diana Cooper. 35,000 first printing.

The Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives

Daughters of Britannia

Venice, 1604. When rumours of a spectacularly rare and priceless diamond begin to circulate amongst the gamblers and courtesans of the Venetian demi-monde, the Levant Company merchant, Paul Pindar, becomes convinced that the jewel is somehow linked to the fate of his former love, Celia Lamprey. As his obsession with the mysterious stone grows it becomes clear that there are other, more sinister forces at play. Is the diamond real, or is it just a trick to lure him to his ruin?

The Pindar Diamond

1611. A new artistic and intellectual Renaissance comes to England. As trade routes open up, a rich and cosmopolitan middle class emerges, with an interest in architecture, gardens, and textiles. Seven years after he was all but destroyed in his quest to take possession of the Pindar Diamond, Levant Company merchant and former ambassador to Constantinople Paul Pindar returns triumphantly to England. Now one of the wealthiest merchants in London, he brings with him his wife, Celia Lamprey. His great house on Bishopsgate has stood empty for ten years. Now, a phalanx of carpenters, upholsterers and gardeners have been summoned to restore it to its former glory. But all is not as it seems.

The House at Bishopsgate

Constantin Dumitru-Pălcuş

Poarta coliviei

"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." The true-life story of women's experiences in the 'Wild West' is more gripping, more heart-rending, and more stirring than all the movies, novels, folk-legends and ballads that popular imagination has been able to create. Whether they were the hard-drinking hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns, 'ordinary' wives and mothers walking two thousand miles across the prairies pulling their handcarts behind them, Chinese slave-brides working in laundries, or the Native American women displaced by the mass migration of the 'whites' to their lands, all have one trait in common: that of extreme resilience and courage in the face of the unknown. Reading the extraordinary accounts they have left behind them, their experiences seem as strange to us today as it must have been to have lived through them, perhaps even stranger. They were put to the test, in terms of sheer survival, in ways that we can only dimly imagine. Praise for Katie Hickman 'Fascinating . . . I was swept along by Hickman's concise chapters and her crisp, wry style,' The Times 'Absolutely brilliant . . . remarkable women, until now almost unknown. I was so gripped I couldn't put it down' Antonia Fraser 'Goes beneath the surface of imperial male history . . . a cast of extraordinary women. Wonderful' Anita Anand

The Dramatic Story of Women of the American West

An authoritative and entertaining account by one of our most talented writers of the courageous and unusual women who have been the backbone of the British Empire and foreign service.

Bhutan is the remote kingdom in the Himalayas, isolated from the outside world for three centuries. The western part has been opened to limited tourism, but the eastern part remains closed. Katie Hickman is one of only a handful of foreigners ever to penetrate these eastern lands. Her trip to Bhutan with photographer Tom Owen Edmunds took a year to set up. They journeyed from the capital Thimphu in the west to the easternmost borderlands and the remote mountain-top retreat of the barbarous Bragpa people. They lived as Bhutanese, they met merchants, abbots, wandering priests, lamas, hermits, a reincarnation of the Buddha and a sorceress. Katie Hickman's account contains all the unexpected and humorous aspects of travel, but, above all, it is about the people of Bhutan.

A Journey Through Bhutan

Dreams of the Peaceful Dragon

In turn-of-the-seventeenth-century Constantinople, merchant Paul Pindar, secretary to the English ambassador, brings a precious gift to the sultan and learns that a woman he once loved may be hidden among the ranks of the sultan's concubines.

Il giardino delle favorite

Constantinople, 1599. Paul Pindar, a secretary to the English ambassador, thinks he has lost his love, Celia, in a shipwreck. Now, two years later, clues begin to emerge that she may be hidden among the ranks of the slaves in the Sultan's harem. But how can he be sure? And can they be reunited? With a secret rebellion rising within the Sultan's palace, danger surrounds the lovers. A lush, ancient tale of treacherous secrets, forbidden love, and murder in the Ottoman palace,The Aviary Gate is exotic historical fiction at its very best.

House at Bishopsgate

From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes a haunting, magical story set in 17th century London, perfect for fans of Jessie Burton and Elif Shafak 1611. Celia Lamprey looks out across the rooftops of Aleppo for the last time. After ten years living in the Orient, she and her husband, Paul Pindar, are setting sail for England – taking with them the legendary diamond, the Sultan's Blue, despite the curse that surrounds it. They arrive to find a country much changed; Bishopsgate, once surrounded by fields, is now a muddy thoroughfare choked with carriages – from which carpenters, gardeners and footmen descend, summoned to restore Pindar's great house to its former splendour. But all is not as it seems. Celia is frail, and the marriage childless. Between the couple lies a great, unspoken darkness. Now, as they await the arrival of Celia's friend Annetta from Venice, another woman, the alluring widow Frances Sydenham, becomes increasingly indispensable to the running of the household – and the happiness of its inhabitants. But who is this strange woman, and what are her real motives? Vividly evoking Jacobean society, The House at Bishopsgate is a sumptuous, richly woven story of marital secrets and sexual jealousy, from a master of historical fiction.

Pioneering Women of the American Wild West

In an absorbing mixture of poignant biography and wonderfully entertaining social history, Daughters of Britannia offers the story of diplomatic life as it has never been told before. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Vita Sackville-West, and Lady Diana Cooper are among the well-known wives of diplomats who represented Britain in the far-flung corners of the globe. Yet, despite serving such crucial roles, the vast majority of these women are entirely unknown to history. Drawing on letters, private journals, and memoirs, as well as contemporary oral history, Katie Hickman explores not only the public pomp and glamour of diplomatic life but also the most intimate, private face of this most fascinating and mysterious world. Touching on the lives of nearly 100 diplomatic wives (as well as sisters and daughters), Daughters of Britannia is a brilliant and compelling account of more than three centuries of British diplomacy as seen through the eyes of some of its most intrepid but least heralded participants.

The first British women to set foot in India did so in the very early seventeenth century, two and a half centuries before the Raj ... In this landmark book, celebrated chronicler, Katie Hickman, uncovers stories, until now hidden from history: here is Charlotte Barry, who in 1783 left London a high-class courtesan and arrived in India as Mrs William Hickey, a married 'lady'; Poll Puff who sold her apple puffs for 'upwards of thirty years, growing grey in the service'; Mrs Hudson who in 1617 was refused as a trader in indigo by the East Indian Company, and instead turned a fine penny in cloth; Julia Inglis, a survivor of the siege of Lucknow; Amelia Horne, who witnessed the death of her entire family during the Cawnpore massacres of 1857; and Flora Annie Steel, novelist and a pioneer in the struggle to bring education to purdah women. For some it was painful exile, but for many it was exhilarating. Through diaries, letters and memoirs (many still in manuscript form), this exciting book reveals the extraordinary life and times of hundreds of women who made their way across the sea and changed history.

British Women in India

She-merchants, Buccaneers & Gentlewomen

Katie Hickman went to Mexico looking for magic. She found it in the circus – Big Top, clowns, elephants and all – where cheap, torn materials and tarnished sequins are transformed into nights of glittering illusion. Gradually adjusting to the harsh ways of the circus's nomadic lifestyle, she soon became absorbed into this hypnotic new world, at first as a foreigner but later as 'La Gringa Estrella', a performer in her own right. Travels with a Mexican Circus is an unforgettable account of a year-long journey through an extraordinary and bizarrely beautiful country.

Katie Hickman

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