18th Century banned book goes out to.....

For my Research Skills 2 blog, I am still using Google as my search engine to find banned books from the centuries I have listed.

It is starting to get easier now that the centuries are getting closer to the 20^th century, and I now have more books to choose which is fantastic but really, who can go past John Cleland’s ‘Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Women of Pleasure’?

Fanny Hill was first published in England in 1748 and banned in 1749 and was known as the “first erotic novel in the English language”. It made its way to the United States and was banned from 1821 until 1966 for obscenity.

Fanny Hill at 15 years of age is orphaned when her parents die and is manipulated into working for a brothel. On her first night she shares a bed with a fellow lodger who tricks Fanny into having lesbian sex with her and soon Mrs. Brown who runs the brothel, figures out that Fanny is a virgin and decides to try to sell her virginity to the highest bidder.

John Cleland does a superb job in writing from this young women’s point of view and the book is written in a series of letter addressed to an unknown women. Cleland portrays Fanny as resourceful, intelligent and a jubilant young woman.

This book is essentially a love story, a historical chronicle and an ode to innocence lost. Fanny Hill will make you laugh, and in turn will make you cry when her true love Charles is sent away and she fears she will never see him again.

A year after it was published; John Cleland and Ralph Griffiths (his brother) were arrested and charged with "corrupting the King's subjects." The trial took place in February 1964. The defence argued that Fanny Hill was a historical source book and that it was a joyful celebration of normal non-perverted sex—bawdy rather than pornographic. Cleland renounced the novel in court and it was withdrawn from sale. Private editions appeared as the book became popular and were sold ‘underground’.

It is definitely an erotic novel with sex scene after sex scene of and really it’s no wonder it was banned in the 18^th Century. If it was written today, l have no doubt that it would’ve gotten a second glance on the book shelves!

 

Those of you who are interested in reading Fanny Hill, here is the eBook link!

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/cleland/john/c624f/index.html

http://sites.google.com/site/fannyhillbook/

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1424731.Fanny_Hill_or_Memoirs_of_a_Woman_of_Pleasure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill