Fanny Hill - Volume I

Order one of 22 prints from this title in our Print Room

Two great erotic talents come together: John Cleland, author of the most famous libidinous novel ever written in the English language, and the enormous illustrative prowess of Erich von Götha. At last a beautifully illustrated Fanny Hill is available to the British public for the first time since its prosecution, and subsequent acquittal, for obscenity in 1963.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, now better known as Fanny Hill, was published in two volumes, in 1748 and 1749, and following this lead we will also be publishing the book in two parts. Fanny has lost none of the bloom of her youth over the centuries - A Woman of Pleasure remains a deliciously erotic book, encompassing the broad gamut of human sexuality in ways that both charm and arouse. Fanny's journey of sexual discovery, taking her from innocent, virginal ingénue to a classy, 'specialised' prostitute in wicked London is an extraordinary document of 18th century manners; and von Götha's brilliant depictions of her discoveries are highly evocative of the period, with an intriguing contemporary twist.

My young sportsman wantonly takes my hand and carries it to that enormous machine of his that stood with a stiffness! a hardness! an upward bent of erection! and which, together with the inestimable bulge of lady's jewels, formed a grand show out of goods indeed!... He hesitated a little; then, settled well in the passage, he makes his way up the straits of it, with a difficulty nothing more than pleasing, widening as he went, so as to distend and smooth each soft furrow: our pleasure increasing deliciously, in proportion as our points of mutual touch increased in that so vital part of me in which I had now taken him, all indriven, and completely sheathed...

Erich von Götha's brilliant depictions are full of exquisite period detail and his delightful colour wash drawings of Miss Hill and her nubile companions in crime are guaranteed to give great pleasure to persons of either sex.