Where does Fanny Hill keep her contraceptives?

Abstract

Abstract I first read Fanny Hill (or, more properly, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) in the 1950s, when it was still a banned book. A friend loaned me a much-thumbed copy, vilely printed in Tangiers, and evidently smuggled in by a merchant sailor. Any bookseller handling Cleland’s ‘erotic masterpiece’ in 1955 would have faced prosecution. British schoolboys caught with the book might expect instant expulsion. Adults found in possession would probably receive a formal police warning and summary confiscation of the offending object (which, one guesses, would be eagerly pored over at the station). Fanny Hill was a much less exciting text after it –– along with Lady Chatterley’s Lover –– was ‘acquitted’ and became a legal high street commodity. It was elevated to classic status by Penguin in 1985 and by OUP as a World’s Classic in the same year. Doubtless some of the more adventurous Alevel boards will soon be prescribing Fanny Hill as a set text and the BBC will chip in with a ‘Book at Bedtime’ version.