Cyprian Balls
This weekend I finally had a chance to simply sit and relax. No kids, No work, No deadline.
So what did I do… well lots of things like clean my car!... but what I was trying to get at here was that I read.
I had forgotten home much I love to sit down and simply read all day. I read Suzanne Enoch’s Something Sinful. A wonderful book that I really enjoyed. 
I also started researching for my next book due in December of this year. I am writing two interweaving straight Historical Erotic Romance novella’s revolving around a Cyprian ball. I have been reading the History of Whites, and I am rereading a book on courtesans that I read when I proposed this story.
It is amazing to me how the Cyprian balls were organized. Here were all these mistresses to the wealthy that were not permitted to attend balls thrown by society so they organized their own. Sometimes the ball appeared to be a simple house party… but the activities, purely on speculation from the times, were vigorous and filled with scandalous behavior all day and night.
The first ball reportedly was held in the Argyle Rooms. 
The picture is a depiction of this ball. It was said that the woman wore the thinnest of gauzes and silks and that the men used the ball to reconnect with old loves as well as to scope out the pickings for new ones.
There is NOT a lot of material around on this subject… and I have only begun my research into the topic, but my mind has run wild with images of lightly veiled orgies in room upon room, mixed with waltzing, drinking and a grand old time. I am truly looking forward to writing a straight historical erotic romance again. Sigh.
When you hear the phrase “Cyprian Ball” what do you picture in your mind?
Hugs and Kisses,
Lacy.
PS. I will keep you posted on what additional information I find on this event.
3 comments:
I've been really intrigued by Cyprian Balls, so I'm looking forward to your story. I've always pictured them as an erotic, more brazen twist on the balls of the day, but I haven't done a lot of research into that area.
The first Stephanie Laurens story I read, On a Wild Night, involved a heroine who went into the world of the demi-monde to find an exciting man for a husband, and I really liked the way Stephanie Laurens depicted the salons and masquerades.
I'm also interested in Cyprian Balls, because one of the characters of my wip is a prostitute who's recently worked herself up to courtesan working through introduction houses. Anyhow, there's a Season starting up and she wants to be invited to one of these balls. The trouble is that as I read the history (the little I got from Katie Hickman's Courtesans), the invitations came from the high-class courtesans, not from their clients. And I don't see how my striving little Dorothea would have gotten herself introduced to one of those ladies.
Ideas, anyone?
Lacy -- so glad you got to sell your Cyprian ball story!
Pam, would she have a friend/mentor amongst the courtesans? Or perhaps her lover might ask one of them to invite her?
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