Fanny Hill: "Truth! stark naked truth"
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Fanny Hill: "Truth! stark naked truth"
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About this listen
In this episode I talk about John Cleland's Fanny Hill or a Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. It's the first work in English to be censured for causing offence - perhaps not surprising since it's also the first pornographic novel written in English.
The version of the text is that edited by Peter Wagner and first published by Penguin in 1985 - it's based on the original two-volume novel (1748-9), not the expurgated version (broken up into 11 letters, instead of the original 2) or any of the various illustrated versions that began appearing in the 1760s.
Content Notes:
This episode includes discussions of sex (between women, between men and women - including group sex, and between men), flagellation, defloration, non-consensual sex, prostitution, abortion, miscarriage, women's and children's bodily autonomy, incest, and Americans and guns. It also includes occasional use of four-letter words that some might find objectionable.