Fanny Being the True Adventures of Fanny Hackabout Jones, by Erica Jong
“What if Tom Jones had been a woman? What if Fanny Hill had been as witty as she was sensuous? What if Moll Flanders had been as tenderhearted as she was tough?”
—Erica Jong
Written as an answer to Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (popularly known as Fanny Hill) by John Cleland, the first English language pornographic novel, Fanny is an extensively-researched novel of adventure and debauchery.
Jong, after Fear of Flying, was criticized as a woman writer who wrote about sex and was accused of heaving "loose morals." She decided to write a novel, using her M.A. in 18th century English literature, from the point of view of a similarly-maligned heroine.
Jong brings a poet’s spirit to everything she writes, and here she deftly assumes the episodic, ornate writing style of eighteenth century novels— while bringing a sly understanding of women’s psychology absent from the books of the time.
Abandoned on the doorstep of an English manor, Fanny is brought up by the manor’s Lord and Lady. When she develops into a comely lass, she is “ravished” by her stepfather and runs away. What follows are a series of adventures showing the different strata of English life at the time and an intellectual, sensual coming of age story.
Fanny is Jong’s best selling book after Fear of Flying and was enormously popular when it was released. Now you can listen our narrator, the arch and witty Nicola Barber, whose long resumé with Audible includes The Rose Garden and Call the Midwife.
--Willow Pennell
