Fanny Hill

Banned in the United States until 1966, Fanny Hill was so sensational an scorching that the book earned its author a jail sentence but is now a recognized classic, filled with political satire and sharply sexual philosophy. Fanny Hill, its long-suffering heroine is a naïve young prostitute in bawdy eighteenth-century London. Raised on a farm, Fanny moves to London when she is 15 and her parents die. Taken in by a Mrs. Brown who runs a brothel and she meets a young client there called Charles who she falls in love with and becomes his kept woman. They live together happily, but then Charles mysteriously disappears and Fanny is told he has abandoned her and gone abroad. She goes to live at another brothel, and later becomes the kept woman of an older man who dies and leaves her his fortune. The books shocking narrative of a country orphan's initiation into the world of prostitution offers an uninhibited portrait of the sexual awakening of a young girl. "Classic of a whore's progress and amorous activities." Michael Perkins in The Secret Record