Fanny Hill
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Cleland, John
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 479540
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Wiretap Electronic Text Archive
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: fannyhill.txt
subject: pleasure
subject: time
subject: nature
subject: digitized
subject: typed
subject: hand
subject: ted
subject: florence
subject: daniel
subject: wave
subject: publishers
subject: cleland
subject: john
subject: fanny
subject: hill
subject: english
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: cleland-fanny-368.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: cleland-fanny-368.htm
sort title: Fanny Hill
full text: This text was digitized (typed by hand) by Ted & Florence Daniel New Wave Publishers 2103 N. Liberty Street Portland OR 97217-4971 This text is in the public domain. FANNY HILL MEMOIRS OF A WOMAN OF PLEASURE c 1749 by John Cleland Letter The First Madam, I sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my con- sidering your desires as indispensable orders. Ungracious then as the task may be, I shall recall to view those scan- dalous stages of my life, out of which I emerg'd, at length, to the enjoyment of every blessing in the power of love, health, and fortune to bestow; whilst yet in the flower of youth, and not too late to employ the leisure afforded me by great ease and affluence, to cultivate an understanding, naturally not a despicable one, and which had, even amidst the whirl of loose pleasures I had been tost in, exerted more observation on the characters and manners of the world than what is common to those of my unhappy profession, who looking on all thought or reflection as their capital enemy, keep it at as great a distance as they can, or destroy it without mercy. Hating, as I mortally do, all long unnecessary preface, I shall give you good quarter in this, and use no farther apology, than to prepare you for seeing the loose part of my life, wrote with the same liberty that I led it. Truth! stark, naked truth, is the word; and I will not so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze wrapper on it, but paint situations such as they actually rose to me in nature, careless of violating those laws of decency that were never made for such unreserved intimacies as ours; and you have too much sense, too much knowledge of the ORIGINALS themselves, to sniff prudishly and out of character at the PICTURES of them. The greatest men, those of the first and most leading taste, will not scruple adorning their private closets with nudities, though, in compliance with vulgar prejudices, they may not think them decent deco- rations of the staircase, or salon. Thi…