In Fiction and Literature
- Bella Cohen, Florry, & Zoe, Ulysses by James Joyce
- Belle, Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'Neill
- Belle Watling, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Candy, in Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction by Luke Davies
- Candy, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
- Chandramukhi, Devdas
- Fanny Hill, Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
- Fantine, Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
- Lady Sally, a.k.a. Callahan's Lady
- Marguerite Gautier, from Alexandre Dumas, fils' work La Dame aux camélias, inspired by real life Marie Duplessis, 19th century courtesan.
- Inara Serra, Firefly by Joss Whedon
- Juliette, in the Marquis de Sade's Juliette
- Lozana, Portrait of Lozana by Francisco Delicado
- Moll Flanders, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
- Molly Malone, Irish urban legend
- Sonya Marmeladova, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Nana, Nana, by Emile Zola
- Nancy, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
- Tra La La, Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby
- Mrs. Rosie Palm, brothel owner and president of the Guild of "Seamstresses" in various Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett
- Phedre no Delauny of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel novels.
- Pie 'Oh' Pah, from Imajica by Clive Barker
- Romulus, central character in The Romanian: Story of an Obsession by Bruce Benderson
- Elisabeth Rouset, Boule de Suif by Guy de Maupassant
- Satine, in Moulin Rouge! by Baz Luhrmann, a story based on the Paris nightclub of the same name.
- Séverine Serizy, in the 1928 novel Belle de Jour and the 1967 film based on it
- Tristessa, Tristessa by Jack Kerouac
- Talanta, La Talanta by Pietro Aretino
- Vasantsenaa, a Nagarvadhu, or wealthy courtesan, in Śudraka's Sanskrit play, Mṛcchakatika.
- Violetta, main character from the opera La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, is also inspired by Alexandre Dumas' La Dame aux camélias. "La Traviata" means "the reprobate".
- Vivian Ward, central character in Pretty Woman
- Suzie Wong, from The World of Suzie Wong
- Yumi Komagata, Rurouni Kenshin, by Nobuhiro Watsuki
- Zaza, Zaza by Pierre Berton and Charles Simon
- Odette, in Marcel Proust's Un amour de Swann
Read more about this topic: List Of Prostitutes And Courtesans
Famous quotes containing the words fiction and/or literature:
“We ignore thriller writers at our peril. Their genre is the political condition. They massage our dreams and magnify our nightmares. If it is true that we always need enemies, then we will always need writers of fiction to encode our fears and fantasies.”
—Daniel Easterman (b. 1949)
“Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)