Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. better known as Fanny Hill. is one of the most notorious texts in English literature. As recently as 1963 an unexpurgated edition was the subiect of a trial, yet in the eighteenth century lohn Cleland's open celebration of sexual enjoyment was a best selling novel.

Fanny's story, as she falls into prostitution and then rises to respectability, takes the form of a confession that is vividly coloured by copious and explicit physiological details of her carnal adventures. The moral outrage that this has always provoked has only recently been countered by serious critical appraisal.Cleland's highly entertaining book is a classic of erotica that holds a unique place in English fiction.

Memoirs of"a Woman of Pleasure, better known as Fanny Hill, is one of the most controversial texts in English literature. John Cleland was summoned before the Privy Council to answer charges of indecency shortly after its publication in 1749, and as recently as 1963 an unexpurgated edition was the subject of a trial. Yet in the mideighteenth century, when licentious literature was in popular demand,Cleland"s arrest was a splendid advertisement, and Fanny Hill, his open celebration of sexual enjoyment, became a best-selling novel. Though Cleland is thought to have received only twenty guineas from Ralph Griffiths, a bookseller in St Paul"s Churchyard, Griffiths is reputed to have made a then massive profit of ten thousand pounds from sales of Fanny Hill.

The story tells of Fanny"s arrival in London as a country innocent,her swift entrapment into prostitution and her experiences in the bawdy houses of that time. It takes the form of a confession contained in two letters and is vividly eoloured by copious and explicit physiological details. Fanny"s character, which is in the mould of Defoe"s Moll Flanders, is not highly developed, yet the novel is not a coarse, gross,offensive or vulgar work, but one of great charm. The bibliographer Pisanus Fraxi wrote, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, "Fanny Hill, the coxcomb, the bawds and debauchees with whom they mix, are taken from human nature, and do only what they could and would have done under the very natural circumstances in which they are placed."