Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

by John Cleland, Peter Sabor (Editor)

Overview

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (commonly known as Fanny Hill), the most famous erotic novel in English, was denounced by its author as 'a Book I disdain to defend, and wish, from my soul, buried and forgot'. Cleland's critics too condemned the 'infamous' and 'poisonous' novel when it first appeared in 1748-9. But the proliferation of editions, adaptations, and translations since then bears witness not only to the popularity of scandalous novels, but also to the book's literary merit. Recounted with a lively use of metaphor and some curiously moral asides, Fanny Hill's boisterous education as a London prostitute never quite effaces the ingenuous charm of her country upbringing, and her story places her among the great heroines of eighteenth-century literature. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192669506
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	04/17/2008
Series:	Oxford World's Classics Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	831,194
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Richard Terry is Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature at Northumbria University. Helen Williams is Senior Lecturer in English at Northumbria University

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
John Cleland: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

Appendix A: Censorship and Its Repeal

1. Warrants for the Detention of Cleland and Others (1749)
2. Statement of Ralph Griffiths Taken before Lovel Stanhope, Law Clerk (13 November 1749)
3. Letter from Cleland to Lovel Stanhope, Law Clerk (13 November 1749)
4. John Nichols, Obituary of Cleland (February 1789)
5. Ruling of Supreme Court Justice Arthur G. Klein (23 August 1963)

Appendix B: Writing Sex

1. From The School of Venus (1680)
2. From Thomas Stretzer, A New Description of Merryland (1741)
3. From John Armstrong, The Oeconomy of Love (1745)
4. From the Trial of Francis Charteris for Rape (1730)
5. Trial of John Deacon and Thomas Blair for Sodomitical Practices (1743)
6. From Thomas Cannon, Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify’d (1749)

Appendix C: Sexual Bodies

1. From Nicholas Venette, The Pleasures of Conjugal-Love Explain’d (1740?)
2. From William Cowper, The Anatomy of Humane Bodies (1737)
3. From La Mettrie, Man a Machine (1749)
4. From Cleland, Institutes of Health (1761)

Appendix D: Prostitution

1. From Cleland, The Case of the Unfortunate Bosavern Penlez (1749)
2. From Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Fanny M— (1759)
3. From Genuine Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Maria Brown (1766)
4. From Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies (1757–95)

Appendix E: Cleland’s Writings on the Novel

1. Review of Tobias Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle, Monthly Review (March 1751)
2. Review of Henry Fielding’s Amelia, Monthly Review (December 1751)
3. From The Dictionary of Love (1753)
4. From Commentary on Historical and Physical Dissertation on the Case of Catherine Vizzani (1751)

Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

A great new edition of this classic erotic novel, with a well-grounded introduction, a biography of its strange author, and abundant materials for studying sexuality and fiction in the long eighteenth century.” — James Grantham Turner, University of California Berkeley

“In preparing the elegantly engraved 1766 edition of John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748), Broadview editors Richard Terry and Helen Williams have lived up to their cover art: an enigmatic, multivalent 1930 photograph of an androgynous nude. A busy introduction sprints from Cleland’s exhausting London life as a man of letters to his long stint with the East India Company to his notorious novel’s place vis-à-vis amatory fiction to its formal problems and the metaphorical devices Cleland invented to solve them. Engrossing footnotes reconstruct the material culture surrounding the novel, enumerating even the ingredients of sack-posset and the chemical composition of hartshorn. Supplementary excerpts from twenty-three contemporary texts foreground eighteenth-century sex, sex work, censorship of sex writing, that writing itself, and its biomedical counterpart (exemplified in Cleland’s own 1761 Institutes of Health).” — Jayne Lewis, Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century

“Scholars and teachers of John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748– 49) can rejoice: there is now a quality teaching edition of this landmark text available from Broadview.” — Bethany E. Qualls, University of California, Davis, Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts 1640–1830

From the Publisher