John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure has been described as the first erotic novel in English and is perhaps the greatest example of the genre.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, popularly known as Fanny Hill, is a novel by John Cleland.

Written while the author was in debtors' prison in London it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel".

The novel is considered "the primary unique English prose pornography, and the first pornography to apply the shape of the unconventional" and become initially refrained from through society or even banned from being revealed.

But beside its highly entertaining and boisterous depictions of a startling variety of sexual acts, Fanny Hill stands as one of the great works of eighteenth-century fiction for its unique combination of parody, erotica and philosophy of ...

The book exemplifies the use of euphemism. The text has no "dirty words" or explicit scientific terms for body parts, but uses many literary devices to describe genitalia.

Written while the author was in debtors' prison in London, it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel".

Fanny Hill was first published by Cleland in 1748. The subject of immediate controversy (and an arrest), it lingered through the ages in an expurgated form. This version contains the complete, unexpurgated edition.