Banned from publication in the United States until 1966 for its assumed obscenity, immorality, and lack of literary merit, Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749), is a novel considered to be the first original English prose erotica. This is the tale of the titular Fanny Hill, told to us in her own letters with “stark naked truth.” Young, orphaned, and naïve, she recounts her early days of prostitution in bawdy eighteenth-century London and her dramatic rise to respectability.
An important work of political, social, and sexual parody and philosophy, the author himself was imprisoned at the time of publication for his depictions of sexual “deviance” as an act of pleasure rather than simply shameful. Fanny Hill deserves its place in continued publication not only for its role in securing rights for erotica, but for its surprisingly modern, explicit, and complicated depictions of sex, love-making, money-talk, and homosexuality.
This uncensored version is set from the 1749 edition and includes a new introduction by Chelsea G. Summers, as well as a conversational afterword between Summers and Jessica Stoya.
Celebrate Banned Book Day at libraries across the United States August 4th!
