Fanny Murray (c. 1729 in Bath – 2 April 1778 in London[1][2][note 1]), née Fanny Rudman and later Fanny Ross, was an 18th-century English courtesan, mistress to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich and dedicatee of the fateful Essay on Woman (1763) that led to the downfall of John Wilkes. A contemporary of Kitty Fisher and Charlotte Hayes, the "celebrated Fanny Murray" was one of the most prominent courtesans of her day; a celebrity and fashion leader who rose from destitution to wealth and fame, before settling down into a life of "respectable prosperity".[3] The Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Fanny Murray are one of the first examples of the "whore's memoir" genre of writing,[4] although they are unlikely to have been actually written by Murray.[5]
- ^ The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1778. J. Dodsley. 1800 [1779].
- ^ "Marriages, births and deaths". The Scots Magazine. 40: 221. 1778.
- ^ Jerry White (2012). A Great and Monstrous Thing: London in the Eighteenth Century. Random House. p. 376. ISBN 978-1448129539.
- ^ "Blaming and Shaming in Whores' Memoirs". History Today. 59 (8). 2009.
- ^ Laura Rosenthal (2007). ""Entertaining Women"". The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730-1830. Cambridge University Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-0521852371.
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