Fanny Hill: Memoirs for a Woman of Pleasure

This unique edition of Fanny Hill Memoirs for a Woman of Pleasure from Dead Dodo Vintage includes the full original text as well as exclusive features not available in other editions.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (popularly known as Fanny Hill), is an erotic novel by John Cleland first published in England in 1748. Written while the author was in debtors' prison in London, it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel." One of the most prosecuted and banned books in history; it has become a synonym for obscenity.

From her position of wealth and happy respectability, Fanny Hill looks back at her early life and disreputable adventures. Arriving in London alone, poor and innocent, she falls into the hands of a brothel-keeper. But only when she is separated from the man she loves does she enroll in the 'unhappy profession' of prostitution. Fanny becomes a kept woman and also works in an elegant bawdy-house, entertaining polite voluptuaries. By the age of eighteen, she can afford to retire; in her marriage she can at last combine sexual passion with romantic love.

Fanny Hill, shrouded in controversy for most of its more than 250-year life, & banned from publication in the U.S. until 1966, was once considered immoral & without literary merit, even earning its author a jail sentence for obscenity.

The tale of a naïve young prostitute in bawdy eighteenth-century London who slowly rises to respectability, the novel & its popularity endured many banning’s & critics, & today Fanny Hill is considered an important piece of political parody & sexual philosophy on par with French libertine novels.