Fanny Hill by John Cleland

The first book we've selected for our Forbidden Book Club is Fanny Hill, also known as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. It has been a notorious novel since it first appeared in London in 1748-9 and banned for its "obscene" content. This fictional account of a young woman's unconventional route to middle-class respectability is, in fact, a lively and engaging comic romp through the boudoirs and brothels of Augustan England, with a heroine whose adventures and setbacks never lessen her humanity or her determination to find real love and happiness. Fanny's story offers modern readers sensuality and substance, as well as an unusually frank depiction of love and sex in the eighteenth century.