SOURCE: "What Is Fanny Hill?" in Essays in Criticism, Vol. XIV, No. 1, January 1964, pp. 65-75.

In the following essay, Slepian and Morrissey defend Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure as a work of literature, arguing that as such, it is a novel of education and intentionally comic.

It is not surprising that the open publication in the United States of John Cleland's notorious Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure—or Fanny Hill, as it is more commonly known—has resulted in a legal battle to suppress the book. What is strange is that although enlightened opinion uniformly held that Lady Chatterley's Lover and Tropic of Cancer were works of considerable literary value, there has been no such agreement as to the purpose or worth of the Memoirs. Even Mr. John Ciardi, poet, editor of the Saturday Review, and long time defender of banned books has announced that Cleland's...