THE ILLUSTRATED FANNY HILL

By John H Cleland

Introduction by Erica Jong

Publisher: The Erotic Art Book Society, New York, 1978

This book is a HARDCOVER with illustrated endpages in very good condition (some edge & corner wear) with 128 pages,

and illustrated with erotic drawings by Zevi Blum.

The dust jacket is in very good condition.

Size = 12 1/4 inches by 10 1/2 inches

FROM THE COVER == Fanny Hill is the longest-enduring, best-selling, most-renowned erotic novel in the English language. Here, at last, is an edition worthy of this classic. The work has appeared in myriad versions, some quaint, some grimy. This bijou of an edition has been designed by Herb Lubalin and illustrated by Zevi Blum.

Its introduction is by Erica jong, whose own novel, Fear of Flying) ran into the same unreasoning censorship that kept Fanny out of bookstores for over a hundred years. In her introduction, Ms. Jong describes the book: "Fanny Hill, an orphaned, fortuneless naif, makes her way from country to city, is exposed to the wicked ways of the town, is set upon by various exploiters of both sexes, but finally triumphs due to her generous heart and unsullied innocence.

Like Tom Jones, Fanny may be ravished again and again in body but the innocence of her soul is ever untarnished ... It has lasted because of the energy and wit of the writing, the delightful cheerfulness of the heroine, the sheer healthiness and bounciness of its approach to physical love. "

MORE ABOUT == Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (popularly known as Fanny Hill) is an erotic novel by English novelist John Cleland first published in London in 1748. Written while the author was in debtors' prison in London,  it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel". One of the most prosecuted and banned books in history, it has become a synonym for obscenity.

The novel was published in two installments, on 21 November 1748 and February 1749, respectively, by "G. Fenton", actually Fenton Griffiths and his brother Ralph.  Initially, there was no governmental reaction to the novel, and it was only in November 1749, a year after the first instalment was published, that Cleland and Ralph Griffiths 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 In court, Cleland renounced the novel and it was officially withdrawn.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. It was once suspected that the sodomy scene near the end that Fanny witnesses in disgust was an interpolation made for these pirated editions, but as Peter Sabor states in the introduction to the Oxford edition of Memoirs (1985), that scene is present in the first edition (p. xxiii). In the 19th century, copies of the book sold underground in the UK, the US and elsewhere.

The book eventually made its way to the United States. In 1821, in the first known obscenity case in the United States, a Massachusetts court outlawed Fanny Hill. The publisher, Peter Holmes, was convicted for printing a "lewd and obscene" novel. Holmes appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

He claimed that the judge, relying only on the prosecution's description, had not even seen the book. The state Supreme Court wasn't swayed. The Chief Justice wrote that Holmes was "a scandalous and evil disposed person" who had contrived to "debauch and corrupt" the citizens of Massachusetts and "to raise and create in their minds inordinate and lustful desires."