Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Wordsworth Classics)

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Though versions of the novel, nearly always abridged in some form, continued to find a way into print, the Memoirs remained an underground text until the 1960s. Cleland penned the novel to liberate himself from debtors prison, and the books manifestly lewd content led to its legal suppression within a year of publication. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure tells the story of Fanny Hill who, upon the death of her parents, moves to London. Only as that decade ushered in a culture less socially deferential and more sexually permissive was the moment opportune for the obscenity ban to be successfully challenged. "One of the most prosecuted and banned books in history, it has become a synonym for obscenity" *Special illustrated edition contains 14 illustrations by William Hogarth (1697 - 1764). Intent on selling her virginity to the highest and most esteemed of bidders, Mrs Brown places her at the disposal of Lord B.