L’Oeuvre de John Cleland

The book comprises two parts: a lengthy introduction by Guillaume Apollinaire — longer than the text it precedes — followed by the Memoirs themselves. This masterpiece of eighteenth-century English erotic literature, published in London in 1740, was banned and condemned as “a vile book, an insult to religion and morality.” Through these Memoirs, John Cleland merely portrayed the manners of his time, when fashionable London indulged itself in dens and brothels. The young heroine, an orphan, leaves the English countryside and falls into the clutches of a procuress. Though she becomes a high-class prostitute, she nonetheless always places virtue above vice and embodies a distinctly “moral” character, worlds away from Sadean figures.

Apollinaire’s presentation of the Memoirs of Fanny Hill offers historical details revealing the most colorful aspects of eighteenth-century London: of all the works published in the series, along with the Ragionamenti, this is the one in which Apollinaire seems to have most delighted, finding in these light evocations an occasion to exercise his wit. In this respect, few documents are as striking as the extracts from the “Cries of London,” a work on London street cries (the cries of merchants, tradesmen and prostitutes), which he reproduces at length throughout his introduction.

A good copy of excellent provenance.