Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, written by John Cleland in 1749 while in debtor's prison, has been called the first pornographic novel. Cleland demonstrated an artful ability to use the writing style of the day, use of irony, and a superficial story of virtue that triumphs over sin to make pornography acceptable enough to be read widely. The story is written in an autobiographical tone and consists of letters Fanny Hill writes to a friend. Her story begins at age 15 when she is orphaned. She moves to London, and has to find a way to support herself. The path she takes, of moving into a brothel, may have been a common solution for young women without means or relatives during that time. While she is in the brothel she meets a man called Charles and falls in love with him, but after they have lived together for a while with her as a "kept woman," or supported by a man without benefit of marriage he disappears. She then aligns herself with another man under a similar arrangement. Eventually he dies, and leaves his/her fortune. Eventually she is reunited with Charles, and she marries him.

This summary leaves out all the rich language, all the passion, and even some of the overarching optimism about prostitution as a way for a young girl without easy means to make her way in the world. The story line Cleland uses, which includes many passages graphically depicting Fanny engaged in sexual activities with both men...

However, Cleland seemed to foreshadow the legal rulings he would inspire over 200 years later by providing moral lessons and insights about characters and motives that give the book the legal concept of "redeeming value."
The language used by Cleland reminds one of other writers of the day, for example, Jonathan Swift. The writing reminds one of Jonathan Swift in another way as well, because Swift also used flowery language and deceptively simple logic to make things viewed as unacceptable by society not only acceptable but desirable - the consumption of babies as a profitable food product. He uses the language to put forth the pretense that because he used lots of elaborate language, he was not speaking directly and frankly about sex acts:

At the same time, allow me to place you here an excuse I am conscious of owing you, for having, perhaps, too much affected the figurative style; though surely, it can pass nowhere more allowably than in a subject which is so properly the province of poetry, nay, is poetry itself, pregnant with every flower of imagination and loving metaphors, even were not the natural expressions, for respects of fashion and sound, necessarily forbid it." (Fanny Hill, p. 288)

Although Ollsen (2000) seems to think Cleland intended sincerely to write a book that was a "a paean to the superiority of the joys of…