Such too, and so cruel was my fate, that I dreaded the sight of Mrs. Brown, as if I had been the criminal, and she the person injur'd: a mistake which you will not think so strange, on distinguishing that neither virtue, nor principles, had the least share in the defence I had made; but only the particular aversion I had conceiv'd against this first brutal and frightful invader of my tender innocence. N2 - John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure has been described as the first erotic novel in English and is perhaps the greatest example of the genre. From the outset it was mired in disrepute. Cleland penned the novel to liberate himself from debtors’ prison, and the book’s manifestly lewd content led to its legal suppression within a year of publication. 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. 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. Cleland’s novel is a triumph of literary style, resting on his invention of an entirely new, vividly metaphoric, terminology for describing sexual pleasure.This Broadview Edition provides a new text of the original novel alongside extensive materials on Cleland’s biography and career, contemporary censorship, and pornography and prostitution in the eighteenth century.

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The young fellow had just dismounted, when the old lady immediately sprung up, with all the vigour of youth, derived no doubt from her late refreshment; and making him sit down, began in her turn to kiss him, to pat and pinch his cheeks, and play with his hair, all which he receiv'd with an air of indifference, and coolness, that showed him to me much altered from what he was when he first went on to the breach. After some pause, he ask'd me, with a tone of voice mightily soften'd, whether I would make it up with him before the old lady returned, and all should be well; he would restore me his affections: at the same time offering to kiss me, and feel my breasts. But now my extreme aversion, my fears, my indignation, all acting upon me, gave me a spirit not natural to me, so that breaking loose from him, I ran to the bell, and rang it, before he was aware, with such violence and effect, as brought up the maid to know what was the matter, or whether the gentleman wanted any thing? and, before he could proceed to greater extremities, she bounc'd into the room, ​and seeing me stretch'd on the floor, my hair all dishevell'd, my nose guishing out blood, (which did not a little tragedize the scene) and my odious persecutor still intent of pushing his brutal point, unmov'd by all my cries and distress, she was herself confounded, and did not know what to do. After saluting her, he led her to a couch that fronted us, where they both sat down, and the young Genoese help'd her to a glass of wine, with some Naples bisket on a salver.For my part, I will not pretend to describe what I felt all over me, during this scene; but from that instant, adieu all fears of what man could do unto me? they were now changed into such ardent desires, such ungovernable longings, that I could have pull'd the first of that sex that should present himself, by the sleeve, and offered him the bauble, which I now imagin'd the loss of would be a gain I could not too soon procure myself. The first letter begins with a short account of Fanny's impoverished childhood in a Lancashire village. At age 14, she loses her parents to smallpox, arrives in London to look for domestic work, and gets lured into a brothel. She sees a sexual encounter between an ugly older couple and another between a young attractive couple, and participates in a lesbian encounter with Phoebe, a bisexual prostitute. A customer, Charles, induces Fanny to escape. She loses her virginity to Charles and becomes his lover. Charles is sent away by deception to the South Seas, and Fanny is driven by desperation and poverty to become the kept woman of a rich merchant named Mr H—. After enjoying a brief period of stability, she sees Mr H— have a sexual encounter with her own maid, and goes on to seduce Will (the young footman of Mr H—) as an act of revenge. She is discovered by Mr H— as she is having a sexual encounter with Will. After being abandoned by Mr H—, Fanny becomes a prostitute for wealthy clients in a pleasure-house run by Mrs Cole. This marks the end of the first letter. Phœbe, who had more experience, and to whom such sights were not so new, could not however be unmov'd at so warm a scene; and drawing me away softly from the peep-hole, for fear of ​being over-heard, guided me as near the door as possible; all passive and obedient to her least signals. Oh! how still and hush did I keep at my stand, lest any noise should baulk my curiosity, or bring Madam into the closet! As if this had been the signal agreed on for pulling off all their cloaths, a scheme which the heat of the season perfectly favoured, Polly began to draw her pins, and as she had no stays to unlace, she was in a trice, with her gallant's officious assistance, undress'd to all but her shift.

Fanny Hill - Wikipedia

Prepared then, and disposed as I was by the discourse of my companions, and Phœbe 's minute detail of every thing, no wonder that such a sight gave the last dying blow to my native innocence. We had certainly been but a few instants away from it, and yet on our return we saw every thing in good ​forwardness for recommencing the tender hostilities. I had it now, I felt it now: and beginning to drive, he soon gave nature such a powerful summons down to her favourite quarters, that she could no longer refuse repairing thither: all my animal spirits then rush'd mechanically to that center of attraction, and presently, inly warm'd, and stirr'd as I was beyond bearing, I lost all restraint, and yielding to the force of the emotion, gave down, as mere woman, those effusions of pleasure, which in the strictness of still faithful love, I could have wish'd to have held up. I could not but observe that my young minion was as much spruc'd out as could ​be expected from one in his condition; a desire of pleasing that could not be indifferent to me, since it prov'd that I pleased him, which I assure you was now a point I was not above having in view.The novel was published in two instalments, on 21 November 1748 and in February 1749, by Fenton Griffiths and his brother Ralph under the name "G. Fenton". [7] There has been speculation that the novel was at least partly written by 1740, when Cleland was stationed in Bombay as an employee of the East India Company. [8] Conversation, example, all, in short, contributed, in that house, to corrupt my native purity, which had taken no root in education, whilst now the inflammable principle of pleasure, so easily fired at my age, made strange work within me, and all the modesty I was brought up in the habit, (not the instruction) of, began to melt away, like dew before the sun's heat; not to mention that I made a vice of necessity, from the constant fears I had of being turn'd out to starve. As he stood on one side for a minute or so, unbuttoning his waste-coat, and breeches, her fat, brawny thighs hung down, and the whole greasy landskip lay fairly open to my view: a wide open-mouth'd gap, overshaded with a grizzly bush, seemed held out like a beggar's wallet for its' provision. Holmes, Thomas Alan (2009). "Sexual Positions and Sexual Politics: John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure". South Atlantic Review. 74 (1): 124–139. ISSN 0277-335X. JSTOR 27784834.

FANNY HILL - Project Gutenberg Australia

The opportunity however did not offer till next morning, for Phœbe did not come to bed till long after I was gone to sleep: as soon then, as we were both awake, it was but in course to bring our ly-a-bed chat to land on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the love scene, I had thus, by a chance been spectatress of, served for a preface. Phœbe 's compliments, however, in which her own share in dressing me was ​not forgot, did not a little confirm me in now the first notions I had ever entertained concerning my person, which, be it said without vanity, was then tolerable enough to justify a taste for me, and of which it may not be out of place here to sketch you an unflatter'd picture.Sky Movies wrote, "they should have made the script funnier, got Kenneth Williams and Joan Sims - and retitled it Carry On Fanny..." [5]