by Joshua Reynolds
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
After a lifetime of betrayal and abuse as an 18th century sex worker, Catherine Jemmat broke the ultimate social taboo: she wrote the truth about her life. Her “scandalous memoir” helped change the way readers thought about women’s lives, and her second book introduced a radical new idea into English society – that the true ‘abuser’ driving desperate women into lives of so-called sin and degradation was, in fact – society itself.
Returning guest Miranda Garno Rossa is back to introduce Olivia to this courageous, unexpected heroine.
Miranda Garno Rossa is a professor turned antiquarian bookseller with over twenty years’ experience in rare book history and manuscript studies. As the co-founder of Marginalia Rare Books, her appreciation for the intersections among femme, queer, BIPOC, and disabled communities informs her mission of placing these peoples’ early texts in special collections libraries where they can be centered and celebrated. As a collector, she specializes in the history of the British sex trade in the long eighteenth century, gathering scandalous memoirs, satires, portraits, and early erotic books that document its diverse community members’ life experiences outside the mainstream. Rossa’s work has appeared in publications including The Shakespearean International Yearbook and Studies in English Literature; and she has been an invited speaker for organizations including the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, the Rare Book and Manuscript Section of the ALA, and the Vanderbilt Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy.
Music featured in this episode by
Amanda Setlik Wilson, The Herschel Ensemble, Kevin MacLeod, and Pablo Casals
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