A brilliant amalgam of Tom Jones, Moll Flanders,and Fanny Hill, Erica Jong’s Fanny is a wonderfully inventive, deliciously bawdy picaresque novel featuring an irrepressible heroine you won’t soon forget
In eighteenth-century England, life begins somewhat ignobly for Fanny Hackabout-Jones. Abandoned as an infant on the doorstep of Lord and Lady Bellars’s grand Wiltshire manor, she contemplates the literary life as she grows to ripe young womanhood in the Bellars’s care. Fanny chooses, however, to pursue a very different future when she is forced to flee to London to escape the overly amorous attentions of her adoptive father.
There, on the road, her real life truly begins. Cast by pernicious Fate—and by her own audacious will—into a series of astonishing escapades in the company of highwaymen, witches, pirates, and ladies of the evening, Fanny endures numerous trials while enjoying myriad satisfactions along the way. And though a woman’s lot is not an easy one in these most oppressive of times, Fanny will not be discouraged, nor will she falter, on the uneven path toward fortune, self-discovery, motherhood, and love.
With true emotional and literary heft, Fanny tells the story of the unabashed life of a fearless young woman whose lusty misadventures carry her from brothel to bedroom to the pirate-infested high seas.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erica Jong including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.
“An explosion, a surge of literary energy. . . . An entertaining novel, but also a novel of ideas. . . . A prodigious work of fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A galloping good story. . . . Rollicking and bawdy, with a center of pure gold.” —The Plain Dealer
“Mrs. Fanny, who useth her reason as well as her rump, is a most refreshing delight.” —The Washington Post
Erica Jong (b. 1942) was raised in New York City, where she first attracted attention as a poet, winning various awards for two volumes of verse published in the early 1970s. But she is best known forher first novel, Fear of Flying, which struck a chord with a country still reeling from the sexual revolution. Though it initially drew controversy for its frank depiction of female sexuality, it has sold more than eighteen million copies worldwide.
Jong followed Isadora Wing through three more novels: How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In addition to continuing to produce poetry, Jong has written historical fiction, most recently Sappho's Leap, and two memoirs, Fear of Fifty and Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life.
