Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland (English) Paperback

Description: Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, Peter Wagner Published in 1748-9, this novel is a mocking parody of the warning moralism as seen in Defoes novels, as, rather than ending in misery, Fanny Hill rises from poverty to a middle-class existence as wife and mother via several stages of prostitution. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description A unique combination of sensuality and eroticaForced by the death of her parents to seek her fortune in London, Fanny Hill is duped into prostitution by an old procuress. In Mrs Browns bawdy-house the naive young woman begins her sexual initiation - progressing from innocence to curiosity and desire - and soon embarks on her own path in pursuit of pleasure, until she at last finds true love. John Clelands story of Fannys rise to respectability was denounced after its publication by the then Bishop of London as an open insult upon Religion and good manners, while James Boswell called it a most licentious and inflaming book. But beside its highly entertaining and boisterous depictions of a startling variety of sexual acts, Fanny Hill stands as one of the great works of eighteenth-century fiction for its unique combination of parody, erotica and philosophy of sensuality. Author Biography John Cleland was born in 1710, eldest son of William Cleland, an officer and friend of the Pope. For a while hoe worked for the East India Company, rising from soldiers to businessman to secretary of the Bombay Council, though he returned to London in 1741. He then became a literary hack and journalist and was imprisoned for debt on several occasions, and on one such occasion used the time to write Fanny Hill. He died in Westminster in January 1789.Peter Wagner is a lecturer at the Catholic University of Eichstatt in Bavaria. His books in English include a study of Puritanism in colonial New England, and a survey of erotica in the age of Enlightenment. Review "A rare achievement . . . a ray of sunshine in the gloomy world of lust."--Erica Jong Review Quote "A rare achievement . . . a ray of sunshine in the gloomy world of lust." --Erica Jong Excerpt from Book Volume I Madam, Sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my considering your desires as indispensible orders: ungracious then as the task may be, I shall recall to view those scandalous stages of my life, out of which I emergd at length, to the enjoyment of every blessing in the power of love, health, and fortune to bestow; whilst yet in the flower of youth, and not too late to employ the leisure afforded me by great ease and affluence, to cultivate an understanding naturally not a despicable one, and which had, even amidst the whirl of loose pleasures I had been tost in, exerted more observation on the characters and manners of the world, than what is common to those of my unhappy profession, who looking on all thought or reflexion as their capital enemy, keep it at as great a distance as they can, or destroy it without mercy. Hating, as I mortally do, all long unnecessary prefaces, I shall give you good quarter in this, and use no farther apology, than to prepare you for seeing the loose part of my life, wrote with the same liberty that I led it. Truth! Stark naked truth, is the word, and I will not so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze-wrapper on it, but paint situations such as they actually rose to me in nature, careless of violating those laws of decency, that were never made for such unreserved intimacies as ours; and you have too much sense, too much knowledge of the originals themselves, to snuff prudishly, and out of character, at the pictures of them. The greatest men, those of the first and most leading taste, will not scruple adorning their private closets with nudities, though, in compliance with vulgar prejudices they may not think them decent decorations of the stair-case or saloon. This, and enough, premised, I go souse into my personal history. My maiden name was Francis Hill. I was born at a small village near Liverpool in Lancashire, of parents extremely poor, and I piously believe, extremely honest. My father, who had received a maim on his limbs that disabled him from following the more laborious branches of country-drudgery, got, by making of nets, a scanty subsistance, which was not much enlargd by my mothers keeping a little day-school for the girls in her neighbourhood. They had had several children, but none lived to any age, except myself, who had received from nature a constitution perfectly healthy. My education, till past fourteen, was no better than very vulgar; reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plain-work, composed the whole system of it: and then all my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy timidity general to our sex, in the tender stage of life, when objects alarm, or frighten more by their novelty, than any thing else: but then this is a fear too often cured at the expence of innocence, when Miss, by degrees, begins no longer to look on man as a creature of prey that will eat her. Details ISBN0140432493 Author Peter Wagner Short Title FANNY HILL Pages 240 Series Penguin Classics Language English ISBN-10 0140432493 ISBN-13 9780140432497 Media Book Place of Publication London Edited by Peter Wagner Illustrations illustrations, bibliog Birth 1709 Death 1789 Edition 1st Format Paperback Residence US Imprint Penguin Classics DOI 10.1604/9780140432497 UK Release Date 1985-08-29 US Release Date 1986-01-07 Country of Publication United Kingdom Publisher Penguin Books Ltd Year 1985 Publication Date 1985-08-29 Alternative 9780141905037 DEWEY 823.6 Audience General NZ Release Date 1985-08-28 AU Release Date 1985-08-28 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:1083579;

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