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John Cleland
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The Memoirs of Fanny Hill Kindle Edition

by John Cleland (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.5 3.5 out of 5 stars 63 ratings
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First published in England in 1748, "The Memoirs of Fanny Hill" (also known as "Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure") is an erotic novel by English novelist John Cleland.

"The Memoirs of Fanny Hill" chronicles the life of a London prostitute, describing with scatological and clinical precision many varieties of sexual behaviour. Although elegantly written, the novel was condemned as pornography and was suppressed from its initial publication, almost never being mentioned in literary circles. It was kept in print surreptitiously, however, and for almost two centuries the novel enjoyed a salacious reputation. The book was not published legally until 1963 in the United States and 1970 in England. 



 
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    293 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    E-BOOKARAMA
  5. Publication date
    March 25, 2024
  6. Reading age
    13 years and up
  7. File size
    2279 KB
  8. Page Flip
    Enabled
  9. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  10. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  11. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07SVD2ZTY
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ E-BOOKARAMA (March 25, 2024)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 25, 2024
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2279 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 293 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ B09NRF23BK
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.5 3.5 out of 5 stars 63 ratings

About the author

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John Cleland

John Cleland

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Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5 out of 5
63 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Ralph
5.0 out of 5 stars Read it as a teenager
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2023
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Had to own it again
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Evan Miller
3.0 out of 5 stars The flowery euphemisms served to make the scenes tepid at best rather than exciting
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2016
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I read Fanny Hill because it is a classic piece of erotic literature. I remember staying up late on the weekend after my parents went to bed as a teenager and watching a movie of Fanny Hill on late night Showtime. So the prospect of reading the book intrigued me.

Honestly, I could take it or leave it. The language is a bear to get through due to the times it was written in. The long run-on sentences that sometimes encompass an entire page with more commas than a William Shatner monologue will make you re-read parts to make sure you understand what is being said.

Also, the sex in it is rather staid by today's standards. Not surprising in the modern age of readily available internet porn. Almost every sexual encounter was a rather banal, short lived, missionary position romp. The flowery euphemisms served to make the scenes tepid at best rather than exciting. Also, the scenes suffer from the times it was written in as the attitudes and sexual ignorance come through. One needs to read it with cultural blinders on, knowing that this is going to be an influence on the work. Despite this, the heavy handed "maleness" of the author comes through where it's all about big dicks and the woman achieving orgasm through the prodigious size of the man's member. I guess the times don't change much, right? Lol.

The book is divided into two letters from Fanny to an unknown correspondent. The first letter details how she ended up as a prostitute and later a kept woman who loses her love and ends up back in a brothel. The second letter is her time in the next brothel and finally reuniting with her lost love. The first letter is rather tame. The second letter moves along quicker with more sex scenes and more varied sex scenes but truthfully they are mostly verbose prose variations on missionary with large members. I found myself starting to skip ahead.

It's worth a read to experience one of the earliest erotic works published. The poor author was jailed for writing it and never made anything off its publication. Just don't expect a lot from it.
6 people found this helpful
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Zens
4.0 out of 5 stars Hard to follow such a beautiful story
Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2017
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I loved very erotic.I hope she and Charles are happy. The description was erotic. I will re-read the end hoping they are together .she deserved love
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MarlowesMom
1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible Translation (That's Right, Translation)
Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2019
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Here is Exhibit A to the maxim "you get what you pay for." This was cheap.

There are several versions of Fanny Hill on Amazon. Don't buy this one. The book itself is an example of early 18th century erotica--who even knew such things existed?--and fascinating in its lack of a single "obscene" word or "vulgar" term to identify body parts or describe the remunerative activities of its narrator, the "woman of pleasure" of the subtitle. It's also, SPOILER ALERT, really quite traditional in the end, delivering its protagonist to monogamous marital bliss.

But this edition appears to have been translated from English into some unguessable language and then back from whatever language it was into English using Google Translate without human intervention. Among other words found in the text that one would NEVER find in any English-language book from the 18th century: "upload," "hard drive," and "homosexual" where the context is clear that the original English word was "gay" meaning "happy." Other oddball language: "united states" or "us of a" when the original word was obviously "country" as in leaving London for the English countryside, "herbal" when the original word was obviously "natural," and on and on. It's barely intelligible and then only if one expends great effort to figure out what English word the author must have used the first time around.

Having read other English-language fiction of similar vintage, I would venture to say that purely as a piece of writing this book is not without literary merit. As to its content, it's certainly a curiosity, though not everyone would be curious about it. Check other reviews and find a better version to buy, if you are inclined to buy at all.
6 people found this helpful
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Patricia Bowen-Marcum
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2015
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Love it! Thank you!!
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Lokhi
5.0 out of 5 stars Fanny Hill - Cool!
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2010
I read this book back in high school because a friend recommended it ... liked it then, like it even better now. The illustrations are awesome.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Rebecca Holden
2.0 out of 5 stars Crudely written
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2024
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Crudely written, slightly disturbing in places and hard of o follow. However I bought for research purposes and it did the job intended. Reading this book for enjoyment is not possible due to the poor writing skills of the author and the content matter.
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flamingo
3.0 out of 5 stars Shockingly frank
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2013
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Given the age of the novel, I was very surprised at the highly detailed descriptions of each sexual encounter. Although there is no bad language used, it is shockingly frank. I had expected the wording to be difficult, but the story is very easy to follow. Although there are one or two flowery phrases, the reader is left in no doubt as to what is happening to the unflagging heroine. I did not finish the book as I found the sheer number of liaisons tiresome, and would have liked more of a story.
One person found this helpful
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Rosie Booker
3.0 out of 5 stars 50sog from a long time ago
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 20, 2015
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There were some elements to the story that engaged the reader here; however, as other reviews have stated, this book mostly consists of sex scenes. The problem here is that it hasn't aged well, making the protagonist's choices and actions somewhat unbelievable to a modern audience and her behaviour sounds more like a man's fantasy rather than realism.
4 people found this helpful
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Vincent
1.0 out of 5 stars Gibberish
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2021
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Who published this edition? It reads like a version that has been translated into Korean then converted back into English by Google Translate. Cleland might not have been a litrrary genius, but he could at least write gramatically correct sentences. This edition is gibberish.
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M. D. Leith
2.0 out of 5 stars The Memoirs Of Fanny Hill ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 17, 2018
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Of course we have to attemp to judge this by the era in which it was written. This being done, we still have a rather repetetive description of the act of ex. I gave up in the end and went back to a good old murder mystery!
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