World -Famous Mistresses

Great Britain: Odhams. Very Good. 1970. First Edition. Cloth. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Hardback According to one dictionary a mistress is a "women illicitly occupying place of wife". It is a definition with which the majority of wives would no doubt agree, but in its wider context the mistress has always enjoyed (if that is the word) an important and often influential place in human society all over the world, varying in significance from the slave-like concubines and odalisques of the east to the cossetted and protected female powers-behind-the-throne so characteristic of Euopean royalty over the last few centuries. Mistresses are usually associated with men of power and wealth - they have to be "afforded" and kept in proper style. They are usually more than just playthings. Too often a mistress has not only been a "women illicitly occupying place of wife", but also "illicitly occupying place of Queen", for mistresses through history have been very much the sport of kings - although even the humblest proletarian male may have a mistress rather than a prostitute. Mistresses in the higher echelons of power and government always seem to possess a certain glamour, whether they merit it or not. From Cleopatra to Christine Keeler they exert a hypnotic fascination on a world largely indocrinated in the virtures of an ecclesiastically based moral philosophy of monogamy. In this volume many famous mistresses have necessarily been omitted - to write about them all in any detail would require a score of such volumes - but the chosen women are those who on the whole left their mark upon history in one way or another, either politically or culturlly. Illustrated.(We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.) .