Fanny Hill John Cleland

The novel was published in two instalments, on 21 November 1748 and in February 1749, by Fenton Griffiths and his brother Ralph under the name "G. Fenton".[7] There has been speculation that the novel was at least partly written by 1740, when Cleland was stationed in Bombay as an employee of the East India Company.[8]

Initially, there was no governmental reaction to the novel. However, in November 1749, a year after the first instalment was published, Cleland and Ralph Griffiths were arrested and charged with "corrupting the King's subjects". In court, Cleland renounced the novel and it was officially withdrawn.

As the book became popular, pirate editions appeared. It was once believed that the scene near the end, in which Fanny reacts with disgust at the sight of two young men engaging in anal intercourse,[9] was an interpolation made for these pirated editions, but the scene is present in the first edition (p. xxiii). In the 19th century, copies of the book sold underground in the UK, the US and elsewhere.[10] In 1887, a French edition appeared with illustrations by Édouard-Henri Avril.

The book eventually made its way to the United States. In 1821, a Massachusetts court outlawed Fanny Hill. The publisher, Peter Holmes, was convicted for printing a "lewd and obscene" novel. Holmes appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court. He claimed that the judge, relying only on the prosecution's description, had not even seen the book. The state Supreme Court was not swayed. The Chief Justice wrote that Holmes was "a scandalous and evil disposed person" who had contrived to "debauch and corrupt" the citizens of Massachusetts and "to raise and create in their minds inordinate and lustful desires".

Mayflower (UK) edition

In 1963, after the 1960 court decision in R v Penguin Books Ltd that allowed the continuing publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, Gareth Powell's Mayflower Books published an uncensored paperback version of Fanny Hill. The police became aware of the 1963 edition a few days before publication, having spotted a sign in the window of the Magic Shop in Tottenham Court Road in London, run by Ralph Gold. An officer went to the shop, bought a copy, and delivered it to Bow Street magistrate Sir Robert Blundell, who issued a search warrant. At the same time, two officers from the Metropolitan Police's Obscene Publications Branch visited Mayflower Books in Vauxhall Bridge Road to determine whether copies of the book were kept on the premises. They interviewed Powell, the publisher, and took away the five copies there. The police returned to the Magic Shop and seized 171 copies of the book, and in December, Gold was summonsed under section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959. By then, Mayflower had distributed 82,000 copies of the book, but it was Gold who was being tried, although Mayflower covered the legal costs. The trial took place in February 1964. The defence argued that Fanny Hill was a historical source book and that it was a joyful celebration of normal non-perverted sex—bawdy rather than pornographic. The prosecution countered by stressing one atypical scene involving flagellation, and won. Mayflower elected not to appeal.

Luxor Press published a 9/6 edition in January 1964, using text "exactly the same as that employed for the de-luxe edition" in 1963. The back cover features praise from The Daily Telegraph and from the author and critic Marghanita Laski. It went through many reprints in the first couple of years.

The Mayflower case highlighted the growing disconnect between the obscenity laws and the permissive society that was developing in late 1960s Britain, and was instrumental in shifting views to the point where in 1970 an uncensored version of Fanny Hill was again published in Britain.

1960s US edition: prosecutions and court rulings

In 1963, Putnam published the book in the United States under the title John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. This edition led to the arrest of New York City bookstore owner Irwin Weisfeld and clerk John Downs[11][12] as part of an anti-obscenity campaign orchestrated by several major political figures.[13][14] Weisfeld's conviction[15] was eventually overturned in state court and the New York ban of Fanny Hill lifted.[16] The new edition was also banned for obscenity in Massachusetts, after a mother complained to the state's Obscene Literature Control Commission.[10] The Massachusetts high court did rule Fanny Hill obscene[17] and the publisher's challenge to the ban now went up to the Supreme Court. In a landmark decision in 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Memoirs v. Massachusetts that Fanny Hill did not meet the Roth standard for obscenity.[18]

The art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann recommended the work in a letter for "its delicate sensitivities and noble ideas" expressed in "an elevated Pindaric style".[19]