Overview

Offers a tantalizing true story of vice and power in the Gilded Age South, as told through the life and times of the notorious Miss Belle. Secrecy was a moral code in the sequestered demimonde of prostitution in Victorian America, so little has been written about the Southern madam credited with inspiring the character Belle Watling in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.

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9780813168449

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Wall's research also offers an unexpected history of Bluegrass horse culture; horse racing defined Lexington, and the descriptions of the sport's history [...] provide a unique regionalism to the study.[...] By intertwining the life of Belle Brezing with the changing landscape of the city of Lexington, Wall's book also offers significant insight into the moral shifts from the Victorian era to the Progressive era. [... ] [A] new, vibrant addition to the history of gender, work, brothels, and Gilded Age life in a small city struggling to define itself. -- Journal of Southern History

Author Information

Maryjean Wall served as the turf writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader for twenty-five years. The author of How Kentucky Became Southern: A Tale of Outlaws, Horse Thieves, Gamblers, and Breeders, she holds a doctorate and is an instructor in the Department of History at the University of Kentucky, USA.

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