# Is "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill)" by John Cleland a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) by John Cleland ('G. Fenton' in the Strand, London — a false imprint for Fenton and Ralph Griffiths; printed by Thomas Parker, 1749) is identified by: The imprint reads 'London: printed [by Thomas Parker] for G. The London 'G.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The imprint reads 'London: printed [by Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton in the Strand, 1749' and is false in the name only: 'G. Fenton' is an inversion of Fenton Griffiths, brother of the bookseller and publisher Ralph Griffiths, who was the real publisher and who later blamed his brother for the book
- Volume I was issued 21 November 1748 and volume II in February 1749, but catalogue records give the title-page imprint as 1749 on both — so the '1748-1749' span in the census describes the installment publication dates, not anything printed on the books
- The decisive textual point of the true first is that it contains an important two-paragraph description of a male homosexual encounter that was deleted from all subsequent editions (Peter Sabor); its absence rules out the first
- Cleland wrote the book in the Fleet Prison
- Griffiths claimed to have sold about sixty copies between November 1748 and November 1749, when he and Cleland were arrested and charged with corrupting the King's subjects
- No edition statement, no number line, no jacket
- Publisher imprint reads 'G. Fenton' in the Strand, London — a false imprint for Fenton and Ralph Griffiths; printed by Thomas Parker

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | John Cleland |
| Publisher | 'G. Fenton' in the Strand, London — a false imprint for Fenton and Ralph Griffiths; printed by Thomas Parker |
| Year | 1749 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The imprint reads 'London: printed [by Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton in the Strand, 1749' and is false in the name only: 'G. Fenton' is an… |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
Two volumes, London. The imprint reads 'London: printed [by Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton in the Strand, 1749' and is false in the name only: 'G. Fenton' is an inversion of Fenton Griffiths, brother of the bookseller and publisher Ralph Griffiths, who was the real publisher and who later blamed his brother for the book. Volume I was issued 21 November 1748 and volume II in February 1749, but catalogue records give the title-page imprint as 1749 on both — so the '1748-1749' span in the census describes the installment publication dates, not anything printed on the books. The decisive textual point of the true first is that it contains an important two-paragraph description of a male homosexual encounter that was deleted from all subsequent editions (Peter Sabor); its absence rules out the first. Cleland wrote the book in the Fleet Prison; Griffiths claimed to have sold about sixty copies between November 1748 and November 1749, when he and Cleland were arrested and charged with corrupting the King's subjects. No edition statement, no number line, no jacket.

## Is this the true first?
The London 'G. Fenton' printing is the true first and the census claim is confirmed, with the correction to the date noted above. There is no competing UK/US or original-language claimant. The first-thus trap is the expurgated recasting issued under the title Memoirs of Fanny Hill, which drops the offending material and circulated widely in place of the full text; it is a different and shorter work and is not the first edition. The 1963 G.P. Putnam's Sons edition is the first unexpurgated American edition and is collected in its own right as the trigger for Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966), in which the Supreme Court lifted the Massachusetts ban — but it is emphatically not a first edition of the book.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
This is the title where the reprint question matters most: the census is right that unexpurgated eighteenth-century printings are vanishingly rare and that virtually everything in circulation is a modern reprint. Any copy with an ISBN, a dust jacket, perfect binding, or a twentieth-century publisher's imprint is modern regardless of what the title-page date claims. Eighteenth-century piracies also exist and are genuinely old but are not the first — copies dated 1781, for example, are recorded and offered as early editions rather than firsts. Because the book was clandestine from the outset, treat any 'G. Fenton 1749' title-page with suspicion until the text at the homosexual-encounter passage and the physical make-up have both been examined.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill)* by John Cleland a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/memoirs-of-a-woman-of-pleasure-fanny-hill
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.