Fanny Hill

Cover of an undated American edition, c. 1910
Author	John Cleland
Original title	Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Erotic novel
Publisher
Publication date	November 21, 1748 & 1749
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-14-043249-3

Illustration by Édouard-Henri Avril

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, also known as Fanny Hill, is a novel by John Cleland. Written in 1748 while Cleland was in debtor's prison in London, it is considered the first modern "erotic novel" in English, and has become a byword for the battle of censorship of erotica. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... John Cleland (baptised September 24, 1709 – January 23, 1789) was an English novelist most famous and infamous as the author of Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. ... For other uses, see Country (disambiguation). ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Erotic literature is literature, either as a form of erotica written to arouse the reader, or to give instruction in sexual technique. ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... is the 325th day of the year (326th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1748 (MDCCXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ... Events While in debtors prison, John Cleland writes Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure). ... Hardcover books A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) is a book bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth, heavy paper, or sometimes leather). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... ISBN redirects here. ... Image File history File links Metadata No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links Metadata No higher resolution available. ... This article is about the literary concept. ... John Cleland (baptised September 24, 1709 – January 23, 1789) was an English novelist most famous and infamous as the author of Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. ... Year 1748 (MDCCXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... Erotic literature is a literary genre that either takes the form of erotica written to arouse the reader, or to give instruction in sexual technique. ... For other uses, see Censor. ...

Publishing history

The novel was published in two instalments, firstly on November 21, 1748 and February of 1749. Initially, there was no governmental reaction to the novel, and it was only in November 1749, a year after the first installment was published, that Cleland and his publisher were arrested and charged with "corrupting the King's subjects." In court, Cleland renounced the novel and it was officially withdrawn. However, as the book became popular, pirate editions appeared. In particular, an episode was interpolated into the book depicting homosexuality between men, which Fanny observes through a chink in the wall. Cleland published an expurgated version of the book in March 1750, but was nevertheless prosecuted for that, too, although the charges were subsequently dropped. Some historians, such as J. H. Plumb, have hypothesised that the prosecution was actually caused by the pirate edition containing the "sodomy" scene. is the 325th day of the year (326th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1748 (MDCCXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ... The Cathach of St. ... Homosexuality refers to sexual interaction and / or romantic attraction between individuals of the same sex. ... Sir John Harold Plumb (1911 Р21 October 2001), known as Jack, was a British historian, known for his books on British eighteenth century history. ... Fran̤ois Elluin, Sodomites provoking the wrath of God, from Le pot pourri de Loth (1781). ...

In the 19th century, copies of the book were sold "underground," and the book eventually made its way to the United States where, in 1821, it was banned for obscenity. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Year 1821 (MDCCCXXI) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... A ban is, generally, any decree that prohibits something. ... Obscenity in Latin obscenus, meaning foul, repulsive, detestable, (possibly derived from ob caenum, literally from filth). The term is most often used in a legal context to describe expressions (words, images, actions) that offend the prevalent sexual morality of the time. ...

In 1963, G. B. Putnam published the book under the title John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure which also was immediately banned for obscenity. The publisher challenged the ban in court. For other uses, see 1963 (disambiguation). ...

In a landmark decision in 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Memoirs v. Massachusetts that the banned novel did not meet the Roth standard for obscenity. Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., (large image) The Supreme Court of the United States, located in Washington, D.C., is the highest court (see supreme court) in the United States; that is, it has ultimate judicial authority within the United States... Memoirs v. ... Holding Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, but more strictly defines what is considered obscene. Court membership Chief Justice: Earl Warren Associate Justices: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Harold Hitz Burton, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Charles Evans Whittaker Case opinions...

In 1973, the Miller Test came into effect, and as a result the ban on the novel was lifted because although it appeals to the prurient interest and at points is patently offensive, the work taken as a whole does not lack literary or artistic value. The Miller test is the United States Supreme Courts test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited. ...

Erica Jong's 1980 novel Fanny purports to tell the story from Fanny's point of view, with Cleland as a character she complains fictionalized her life. Erica Jong (née Mann, born March 26, 1942, in New York City, New York) is an American author and educator. ... Year 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar). ...

Plot

The book concerns the eponymous character, who begins as a poor country girl of 15 who is forced by poverty to leave her village home and go to town. There, she is tricked into working in a brothel, but before losing her virginity there, escapes with a man named Charles with whom she has fallen in love. After several months of living together, Charles is sent out of the country unexpectedly by his father, and Fanny is forced to take up a succession of new lovers to survive.

What is remarkable and innovative about the novel is that Cleland's writing style is witty, learned, and full of Classical asides. Also, Fanny herself does not, like Roxana or Moll Flanders, repent. She has no remorse for her education in sex, although she does realize that she is being exploited. Further, Fanny acts as a picara: as a prostitute she shows the wealthy men of the peerage at their most base and private. Samuel Richardson and Daniel Defoe had written about women forced into compromised situations before, and they had hinted graphically enough that the subversive and erotic context was present, but neither made their heroines women of pleasure. Neither of them imputed to their women any joy in their situation, whereas Cleland does. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders is a 1722 novel by Daniel Defoe. ... The picaresque novel (Spanish: picaresco, from pícaro, for rogue or rascal) is a popular style of novel that originated in Spain and flourished in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries and has continued to influence modern literature. ... Samuel Richardson (August 19, 1689 – July 4, 1761) was a major 18th century writer best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753). ... Daniel Defoe (1659/1661 [?] â€“ April 24 [?], 1731)[1] was a British writer, journalist, and spy, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. ...

Extract

Illustration to Fanny Hill by Édouard-Henri Avril.

...and now, disengag’d from the shirt, I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ’d, it must have belong’d to a young giant. Its prodigious size made me shrink again; yet I could not, without pleasure, behold, and even ventur’d to feel, such a length, such a breadth of animated ivory! perfectly well turn’d and fashion’d, the proud stiffness of which distended its skin, whose smooth polish and velvet softness might vie with that of the most delicate of our sex, and whose exquisite whiteness was not a little set off by a sprout of black curling hair round the root, through the jetty sprigs of which the fair skin shew’d as in a fine evening you may have remark’d the clear light ether through the branchwork of distant trees over-topping the summit of a hill: then the broad and blueish-casted incarnate of the head, and blue serpentines of its veins, altogether compos’d the most striking assemblage of figure and colours in nature. In short, it stood an object of terror and delight. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 423 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (500 × 708 pixel, file size: 75 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) X Fanny whips Mr. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 423 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (500 × 708 pixel, file size: 75 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) X Fanny whips Mr. ... Édouard-Henri Avril drawing depicting the life of Sappho Édouard-Henri Avril (21 May 1843 in Algiers – 1928 in Le Raincy) was a French painter and commercial artist. ... Dancing around the maypole, in Ã…mmeberg, Sweden The maypole is a tall wooden pole (traditionally of hawthorn or birch), sometimes erected with several long coloured ribbons suspended from the top, festooned with flowers, draped in greenery and strapped with large circular wreaths, depending on local and regional variances. ...

But what was yet more surprising, the owner of this natural curiosity, through the want of occasions in the strictness of his home-breeding, and the little time he had been in town not having afforded him one, was hitherto an absolute stranger, in practice at least, to the use of all that manhood he was so nobly stock’d with; and it now fell to my lot to stand his first trial of it, if I could resolve to run the risks of its disproportion to that tender part of me, which such an oversiz’d machine was very fit to lay in ruins.

Film adaptations

Because of the book's notoriety (and public domain status), numerous film adaptations have been produced. Some of them are: The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

• Fanny Hill (USA/West Germany, 1964), starring Letícia Román, Miriam Hopkins, Ulli Lommel, Chris Howland; directed by Russ Meyer, Albert Zugsmith (uncredited) ^[1]
• Fanny Hill (Sweden, 1968), starring Diana Kjær, Hans Ernback, Keve Hjelm, Oscar Ljung; directed by Mac Ahlberg^[2]
• Fanny Hill (West Germany/UK, 1983), starring Lisa Foster, Oliver Reed, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Shelley Winters; directed by Gerry O'Hara^[3]
• Paprika (Italy, 1991), starring Deborah Caprioglio, Stéphane Bonnet, Stéphane Ferrara, Luigi Laezza, Rossana Gavinel, Martine Brochard and John Steiner; directed by Tinto Brass.^[4]
• Fanny Hill (USA, 1995), directed by Valentine Palmer.^[5]
• Fanny Hill, written by Andrew Davies for the BBC and starring Rebecca Night.^[6]

Also Nintendo emulator: 1964 (emulator). ... Ellen Miriam Hopkins (October 18, 1902 – October 9, 1972) was an Oscar-nominated American actress. ... Ulli Lommel (born 21 December 1944) is a noted German actor and film director noted for his many horror films. ... For the baseball player, see Russ Meyer (baseball player). ... Albert Zugsmith (1910 - 1993) was an American film producer and director who specialized in low-budget exploitation films through the 1950s and 1960s. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Mac Ahlberg (12 June 1931 Stockholm, Sweden) is a Swedish film director. ... Year 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1983 Gregorian calendar). ... Lisa Foster (b. ... Robert Oliver Reed (February 13, 1938 – May 2, 1999) was an English actor known for his macho image on and off screen. ... Wilfrid Hyde-White (May 12, 1903 – May 6, 1991) was a British character actor. ... Shelley Winters (August 18, 1920 – January 14, 2006) was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress. ... Gerry OHara (b. ... Paprika is an Italian film from 1991 directed by Tinto Brass. ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ... Debora Caprioglio (born 3 May 1968) is an Italian actress. ... John Steiner is a British actor, born on 7 January, 1941 in Chester, United Kingdom. ... Giovanni Brass (born March 26, 1933), better known as Tinto Brass, is one of the most well-known and controversial Italian filmmakers. ... Year 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full 1995 Gregorian calendar). ... Fanny Hill is an upcoming BBC adaptation of John Clelands controversial novel, Fanny Hill, written by Andrew Davies[1] and directed by James Hawes. ... Andrew Wynford Davies (born September 20, 1936 in Rhiwbina, Cardiff, Wales) is a British screenwriter. ... For other uses, see BBC (disambiguation). ... Rebecca Night (born 1985) is a British actress, who starred in the title role of the James Hawess Fanny Hill, broadcast in October 2007, on the BBC.[1] // Night trained at the Rose Bruford College, where she received critial acclaim for her performance in Patrick Marber’s After Miss...

References in popular culture

In a portrait that appears in the first volume of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Fanny Hill is depicted as a member of the 18th Century version of the League, which also includes The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Pimpernel's wife Marguerite Blakeney, Captain Clegg, Natty Bumppo and Lemuel Gulliver. She is not featured in a portrait of the 18th century League in the film version, which only includes the male members. Moore's third installment of the series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, features the adventures of Fanny Hill in a much more prominent light. For other persons named Alan Moore, see Alan Moore (disambiguation). ... Promotional still for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin ONeill, published under the Americas Best Comics imprint of DC Comics. ... For the eponymous flower, see Scarlet pimpernel. ... Captain Clegg is a fictional character and is one of the aliases of the Rev. ... The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the hero Natty Bumppo, otherwise known as Leatherstocking, Pathfinder, Deerslayer, or Hawkeye. ... This article needs cleanup. ...

The novel is also mentioned in Tom Lehrer's song "Smut". Thomas Andrew Tom Lehrer (born April 9, 1928) is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. ...

A tongue-in-cheek reference to "Fanny Hill" appears in the 1968 David Niven, Lola Albright film The Impossible Years. In one scene the younger daughter of Niven's character is seen reading Fanny Hill, whereas his older daughter, Linda, has apparently graduated from Cleland's sensationalism and is seen reading Sartre instead. The Impossible Years is a play by Robert Fisher and Arthur Marx. ...

In the 1968 version of Yours, Mine, and Ours, Henry Fonda's character, Frank Beardsley, refers to "Fanny Hill" when giving some fatherly advice to his stepdaughter. Her boyfriend is pressuring her for sex and Frank says boys tried the same thing when he was her age. When she tries to tell him that things are different now he observes, "I don't know, they wrote 'Fanny Hill' in 1742 [sic] and they haven't found anything new since." Yours, Mine and Ours is a 1968 film, directed by Melville Shavelson, with Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball and Van Johnson. ...

The 2006-07 Broadway musical, Grey Gardens has a comedic reference to Fanny Hill in the first act. Young Edith Bouvier Beale (aka 'little Edie') has just been confronted about a rumor of promiscuity that her mother, Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale (aka 'Big Edie') told her fiance. Little Edie was allegedly engaged to Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. in 1941 until he discovered that Little Edie may have been sexually acquainted with other men before him. Little Edie implores Joe Kennedy not to break off the engagement and to wait for her father to come home and rectify the situation, vouching for her reputation. The musical line that Little Edie sings in reference to Fanny Hill is: "While the other girls were reading Fanny Hill/ I was reading De - Toc - que - ville" For other uses of Broadway, see Broadway. ... Grey Gardens is a musical with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie, based on the 1975 documentary of the same title about the lives of Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (Big Edie) and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale (Little Edie) by Albert and David... Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. ... For otheruses, see Tocqueville (disambiguation) Alexis de Tocqueville (July 29, 1805 - April 16, 1859) was a French political thinker and historian. ...

References

1. ^ Fanny Hill (1964) at the Internet Movie Database
2. ^ Fanny Hill (1968) at the Internet Movie Database
3. ^ Fanny Hill (1983) at the Internet Movie Database
4. ^ Paprika at the Internet Movie Database
5. ^ Fanny Hill (1995) at the Internet Movie Database
6. ^ Article from The Guardian

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ...

External links

• Complete text of Fanny Hill
• Charles Dickens's Themes A surprising allusion to Fanny Hill in Dombey and Son.
• BBC TV Adaptation First Broadcast October 2007

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Fanny Hill