John Cleland

"Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" has been widely banned and censored since its first publication in 1749, and was only made legal to sell in Great Britain and the United States in 1963. Despite this suppression, the novel has survived the test of time and brought notoriety to its author, John Cleland, because of his lush and witty prose style. The story of Fanny Hill, an orphaned teenage girl who takes to prostitution in order to survive,...

Fanny Hill, one of the most popular novels of the 18th century, traces the rise of its heroine from prostitution to middle-class respectability. Condemned in its own time on grounds of indecency, the book was the subject of several lawsuits until as recently as the 1960s. For today's reader, the work holds as much fascination as when it was first published, not only as the foremost example of English erotic fiction, but also as a literary classic...