This is the book review you get when you’re not getting a book review. Why do I say that? I don’t plan on writing much about the actual contents of the book as it’s rather more spicy than my G rating allows.

Fanny Hill is rather salacious and was very controversial in it’s day. I picked it up out of curiosity and was rather surprised to find it was originally published in 1749, I didn’t think this sort of book would have been allowed in those days. They were rather sedate days and any behaviour that was considered incorrect was kept totally under wraps. Fanny’s behaviour was so out of place with those times that I suspect this book would not have been read openly.

Being written in 1749 I find the language and writing style very different to books written now. There are many words with the ‘ed’ ending which have the ‘e’ apostrophed out i.e. garnished is spelled garnish’d, showed is spelled show’d.

The sentences are more flowery and sedate than those written now. Here’s an excerpt of one sentence. “…but I had with the utmost art and address, on various pretexts, eluded their pursuit, without giving them cause to complain; and this reserve I used neither out of dislike of them, or disgust of the thing.” You have this partial sentence which very gently tells the reader that Fanny has turned the men down and not ‘done the deed’ with them without telling a child anything at all. You really have to understand adult stuff in order to understand the sentence. I’m not saying this is a book you can give to a child, it’s still not recommended but should they stumble upon it then it’s not as challenging to explain as a modern erotica would be.

Here’s another paragraph. “But I was, as it seems, fated to be my own caterer in this, as I had been in my first trial of the market.” This is such a gentle sentence and so different to those written nowadays. Here’s a sentence from a short story in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #48, called Radioactive Gumshoe Blues by Jamie Shanks. “I put my shoulder to the door at high velocity, and in we crashed…”. In both sentences the protagonist has been very active in their job of choice but in Fanny Hill it is very gentle and in a rather roundabout way, whereas in Radioactive Gumshoe Blues it is very straightforward and blunt.

There are exceptions to all of this as some modern people do write more like John Cleland, but writing styles to change over the years and we do have a more confrontationist and blunt writing style now than they did back then.