Customer Reviews

Illustrated Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

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Surprisingly explicit book, John Cleland's book has been well illustrated with contemporary paintings, cartoons and sketches, such as Thomas Rowland, Hogarth and Francois Boucher

Fanny Hill is a clandestine classic, richly erotic, it tells the story of a young girl from the country who is drawn into the teeming underwold of eighteenth century London.

Always good-humoured Fanny makes the best of her fate and the story of her rise through harlotry to reiches and respectability is told with vigour and wit

John Cleland manages to bring Fanny Hill's London to life. Vivid and amusing and highly spiced, it is an entertinaing and readble - even at times romantic account.

It is surprisingly modern in its text. The interesting subtext to this is the surprising nature of its explicitness, quite unexpected for that age. The book, I think, has survived so long because it has a very sympathetic development of the character of Fanny, and despite being racy she has some depth of feeling. The language is also fairly easy reading, not steeped too far in the archaic.