Your review of Dan Cruickshank’s The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital (New York: Random House, 2009) suggests that London was at least two centuries behind Venice when it comes to women’s financial independence (“Harlot’s Progress,” October 17, 2009). Pietro Aretino’s The School of Whoredom (London: Hesperus Press, 2003) lampoons a Platonist dialogue between a mother, a courtesan of renown, and her daughter, an aspiring courtesan, on economic opportunities for women. Written in or about 1535, seven years after Aretino’s move from Rome to Venice following the sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon, his book goes into the nitty-gritty of the oldest trade. Pecuniary advice abounds. If she fails to follow the good advice, the mother keeps repeating, the daughter will end up as poor and destitute as a common whore. Mind you, around 1500 Venice boasted some twelve-thousand prostitutes among about a hundred-thousand inhabitants. Becoming a courtesan of renown was far from a mean feat. Just like in London many years later, all this changed in Venice with the arrival of other economic opportunities for women.