{"id":106218,"date":"2016-12-28T10:30:59","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T15:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106218"},"modified":"2016-12-27T11:25:55","modified_gmt":"2016-12-27T16:25:55","slug":"overdrafts-of-pleasure-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/28\/overdrafts-of-pleasure-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Overdrafts of Pleasure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re away until January 3, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/fanny_hill.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-97752\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/fanny_hill.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"383\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/fanny_hill.jpg 1440w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/fanny_hill-300x191.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/fanny_hill-768x490.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/fanny_hill-1024x654.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>John Cleland wrote his (very) erotic novel,\u00a0<\/em>Fanny Hill<em>,<\/em>\u00a0<em>in\u00a0prison. What did he mean by it?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>John Cleland\u2019s sentences often resemble the sexual encounters he imagined in his best-known book\u2014a two-volume novel called <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/25305\/25305-h\/25305-h.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure<\/a><\/em>, or <em>Fanny<\/em> <em>Hill<\/em>,<em>\u00a0<\/em>published when he was in debtor\u2019s prison between 1748 and 1749, reissued in a censored edition the following year, and presented in both cases as an autobiographical letter by a former courtesan named Fanny Hill. A typical Cleland sentence goes on past any moderate end point, \u201cwedging [itself] up to the utmost extremity.\u201d It makes unexpected, spasmodic, sometimes baffling detours, \u201cexalted by the charm of their novelty and surprise.\u201d It drifts so far into the ridiculous that sometimes it seems \u201cthat on earth\u201d\u2014as Cleland\u2019s heroine comments in one passage about the \u201cwomen of quality\u201d she and her colleagues once wanted to resemble\u2014\u201cthere cannot subsist anything more silly, more flat, more insipid and worthless.\u201d But then it keeps going, escalating until it seems to have been \u201cdriven forcibly out of the power of using any art.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/05\/overdrafts-of-pleasure\/\">Read More &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Cleland wrote his (very) erotic novel,\u00a0Fanny Hill,\u00a0in\u00a0prison. What did he mean by it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":851,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26379],"tags":[13606,4846,22212,15236,22208,16690,17096,8558,22206,22211,19436,22205,22207,12856,8902,19435,19694,179,22210,22209],"class_list":["post-106218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2016","tag-boswell","tag-britain","tag-british-novels","tag-brothels","tag-debtors-prison","tag-eighteenth-century-novels","tag-erotic-novels","tag-ethics","tag-fanny-hill","tag-hal-gladfelder","tag-incarceration","tag-john-cleland","tag-memoirs-of-a-woman-of-pleasure","tag-morality","tag-prison","tag-prison-literature","tag-prostitution","tag-sex","tag-thomas-cannon","tag-tobias-smollett"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>John Cleland\u2019s \u201cFanny Hill\u201d: An Erotic Novel with Morals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Max Nelson on Cleland\u2019s scandalous, pornographic 1748 novel and its unlikely intentions.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/28\/overdrafts-of-pleasure-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Overdrafts of Pleasure by Max Nelson\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 28, 2016 \u2013 John Cleland wrote his (very) erotic novel,\u00a0Fanny Hill,\u00a0in\u00a0prison. 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