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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 23:28, 10 July 2011 [1].

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies edit

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Parrot of Doom 12:15, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Forget what you've read about stuffy old-fashioned Georgian social values, the truth was that if you wanted a bit of hows-your-father, London, specifically Covent Garden, was the place to go. And if, once there, you wanted to know where the best prostitutes might be found, from out-of-work actresses to rich courtesans to rotten old hags, then Harris's List was what you bought - if you could afford it. Harris's List somehow escaped the censors for about 40 years, before a society of busybodies realised that its publishers (who remain largely anonymous) could be done on a trumped-up libel charge. Few copies remain today, but those that do provide a valuable insight into the seedier side of Georgian London. Parrot of Doom 12:15, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Missing bibliographic info for Raven 1992
    • Done.
  • FN 32: seems like the italicization should be almost the reverse of what it is now. Same for FN 59
    • That's a function of the template used, however, I added italics to the titles and it seems to have fixed it.
  • FN 45: need dash in page range. Also, is 1970 part of the title?
    • I use whatever formatting the page sourced uses, if it uses a hyphen then so do I. I fixed the year though both.
  • FN 48: should note that login is required
    • Done.
  • Denlinger 2002: number shouldn't be part of the title
    • Done.
  • Location for Henderson 1999 and Cruickshank 2010? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't have access to Henderson as I pulled a quote from a snippet view (judged the context as the same quote was used in another source). Fixed Cruikshank. Parrot of Doom 14:06, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Very quick driveby on Henderson—is the publisher really Longman? It's dated 1999, but AFAIK Pearson retired the Longman imprint in 1998 and rebranded everything as either Pearson Education or PearsonLongman. – iridescent 21:16, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I took the details from the Google Books site. Usually I click through to the book's first few pages but as a snippet view, it won't let me do that. Parrot of Doom 21:23, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Inflation is fantastic, a guide on how to do it, "Priced in 1788 at two shillings sixpence, Harris's List was affordable for the middle classes, but expensive for a working class man." with footnotes. This contextualises any other use of 18th century figures adequately for a reader. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • File:Covent_garden_c1720.jpg: use creation or publication rather than upload date

Licensing and captions are otherwise unproblematic. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:28, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    • So much for the shiny new Commons uploader. Fixed. Parrot of Doom 18:41, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Comments phoowaawwrrr - enough of that, I'll copyedit as I go and jot notes below: Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:59, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
published from 1757–1795 - looks odd combining from and a dash --> "published from 1757 to 1795"?
Agreed, fixed.
between 120–190 - ditto "+ and" instead of the dash..?
Changed to "about 120..."


frowned on --> "frowned upon"?
I think upon is a little formal for discussion of prostitutes and the like. The two words are interchangeable. Parrot of Doom 21:33, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
ok, I'll pay that. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:51, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Some editions may have been written by Samuel Derrick (why the bold?)
Well, I was about to create Samuel Derrick for real, replacing the redirect, but someone else decided to restore it and bold the text, so I didn't bother. I'm not sure if things need to be bolded in that instance or not.
I de-bolded as it ain't in the lead...Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:30, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Covent Garden was not spared, and the Shakespear's Head Tavern was raided. - lack of a time attached leaves the reader hanging a bit. Can any temporal addendum be added at all?
Same time as the general raids (hence, "not spared"). There's no precise date AFAIK. Parrot of Doom 09:28, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well if it can't be added then it can't be added....Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:30, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise a fun read and eminently and imminently supportable :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments - Dana boomer (talk) 14:08, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Lead, "A Grub Street hack," In this context, "hack" is not easily understood, at least to me. Perhaps this is a bit of British English with which I'm not familiar? Repeated in "Possible authors" section.
    • Hack linked.
  • Commentary, "Some lists also contain defences of prostitution; earlier editions claim that the trade guarded against the seduction of young women, provided an outlet for frustrated married men, and kept other young men from "le péche [sic] que la Nature désavoue [the sin that Nature repudiates]", or sodomy." Some of this sentence seems redundant to the preamble described in the first paragraph of the Content section.
    • The point is to introduce the reader to the idea that the lists' authors were ambivalent toward homosexuality. The previous mention of the preamble is just a physical description of the first pages of each list.
  • Commentary, "and while generally, most entries in the lists look favourably on those women who refrained from swearing" I'm not understanding the need for the comma?
    • Breathing space.
  • Possible authors, "who lived with the actress Jane Lessingham," Is this actress well known in Britain? Because I have never heard of her, and so my first thought was "so why should I care that he lived with her?"
    • A notable actress who doesn't have an article yet. She has an OED entry.
  • Possible authors, "Born perhaps around 1720–1730," Is "perhaps around" redundant?
    • No, the date, or even the range of dates, is unknown. Parrot of Doom 07:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Overall a very nice (and very interesting) article on a publication that I had never heard of. I kept getting sidetracked reading all of the articles about the madams and prostitutes though - a treasury of Wikipedia information that I had not stumbled across before. A few comments above; when these are resolved I shall be happy to support. Dana boomer (talk) 01:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough on the above. Everything else looks good, so changing to support. Great work! Dana boomer (talk) 14:08, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support I read through this some time ago, and I can't find any serious issues now Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:27, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. I have a couple more sentences to add on the Roaches (publishers), but nothing critical. Just been a bit preoccupied lately with other matters. I'll do it in the next few days. Parrot of Doom 14:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: A couple of prose points in the lead:-

  • "two shillings sixpence" is not idiomatic. It was "two shillings and sixpence" (I'm old enough to remember)
    • You're surely not 250 years old ;) The wording above is the same as that used by the source, but it isn't something I'm at all attached to.
      • Well, it's my birthday today, though I'm not quite 250. Notwithstanding the wording in the source, I think you should write in today's idiom, not that of 250 years ago. As written it looks wrong. Brianboulton (talk) 12:44, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The sentence "A contemporary report estimates in 1791 that it sold about 8,000 copies annually" is wrongly constructed. You could say "A 1791 report..." or "A contemporary report (1791) estimates that..." but not as written.

I'll try to read the rest in the next day or so, and leave further comments. An intriguing article, I must say. Brianboulton (talk) 22:17, 3 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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