Pietro Aretino
Pietro Aretino, an Italian Renaissance writer, wrote a series of dialogues ("Capricciosi ragionamenti") in which a mother teaches her daughter what options are available to women and how to be an effective courtesan. The French novelist Balzac wrote about a courtesan in his "Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes" (1838–47). Émile Zola likewise wrote a novel, "Nana" (1880), about a courtesan in nineteenth-century France.