Fanny Hill - Couverture souple

Cleland, John

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 2351840712 ISBN 13 : 9782351840719

Editeur : GARNIERPARIS, 2011

Synopsis

Légères marques d'usage. Envoi rapide et soigné.

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Volume I

Madam,

Sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my considering your desires as indispensible orders: ungracious then as the task may be, I shall recall to view those scandalous stages of my life, out of which I emerg'd at length, to the enjoyment of every blessing in the power of love, health, and fortune to bestow; whilst yet in the flower of youth, and not too late to employ the leisure afforded me by great ease and affluence, to cultivate an understanding naturally not a despicable one, and which had, even amidst the whirl of loose pleasures I had been tost in, exerted more observation on the characters and manners of the world, than what is common to those of my unhappy profession, who looking on all thought or reflexion as their capital enemy, keep it at as great a distance as they can, or destroy it without mercy.

Hating, as I mortally do, all long unnecessary prefaces, I shall give you good quarter in this, and use no farther apology, than to prepare you for seeing the loose part of my life, wrote with the same liberty that I led it.

Truth! Stark naked truth, is the word, and I will not so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze-wrapper on it, but paint situations such as they actually rose to me in nature, careless of violating those laws of decency, that were never made for such unreserved intimacies as ours; and you have too much sense, too much knowledge of the originals themselves, to snuff prudishly, and out of character, at the pictures of them. The greatest men, those of the first and most leading taste, will not scruple adorning their private closets with nudities, though, in compliance with vulgar prejudices they may not think them decent decorations of the stair-case or saloon.

This, and enough, premised, I go souse into my personal history. My maiden name was Francis Hill. I was born at a small village near Liverpool in Lancashire, of parents extremely poor, and I piously believe, extremely honest.

My father, who had received a maim on his limbs that disabled him from following the more laborious branches of country-drudgery, got, by making of nets, a scanty subsistance, which was not much enlarg'd by my mother's keeping a little day-school for the girls in her neighbourhood. They had had several children, but none lived to any age, except myself, who had received from nature a constitution perfectly healthy.

My education, till past fourteen, was no better than very vulgar; reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plain-work, composed the whole system of it: and then all my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy timidity general to our sex, in the tender stage of life, when objects alarm, or frighten more by their novelty, than any thing else: but then this is a fear too often cured at the expence of innocence, when Miss, by degrees, begins no longer to look on man as a creature of prey that will eat her.

Présentation de l'éditeur :

« Mon conquérant qui, d'après ce qu'il me dit plus tard, avait été frappé de ma figure et m'aimait autant qu'il crût possible d'aimer une personne de la condition où je paraissais être, me demanda vivement et sans la moindre hésitation si je voulais qu'il m'entretînt ; il me louerait tout de suite un logement et me délierait de tous les engagements que je pouvais avoir avec la maison. Si téméraire, si abrupte, si inconsidérée et même si dangereuse que pût être cette offre de la part d'un parfait étranger, d'un étourdi, d'un enfant, le prodigieux amour que j'avais conçu pour lui me faisait trouver dans sa voix un charme irrésistible et me rendait aveugle à toute objection ; j'étais prête, en cet instant, à mourir pour lui : jugez si j'avais la force de résister à une invitation de vivre avec lui ! Aussi, après une pause de quelques minutes, laissai-je mon coeur, palpitant d'émotion, me dicter ma réponse. »

Les grands classiques de la littérature libertine, une collection habillée par Nathalie Rykiel
Voici des romans, des confessions, des lettres, des contes, des traités qui célèbrent avec éclat l'amour, le plaisir et les sens. Crus ou voilés, frénétiques ou poétiques, innocents ou cruels, les classiques de cette anthologie ont été retenus pour leurs qualités littéraires et leur importance historique. Mais outre l'énergie et l'invention érotique, on admirera dans ces oeuvres une inextinguible volonté de subversion et d'émancipation. Sous leurs coups de boutoir, la vieille morale vacille et les masques tombent. Cet « enfer » est aussi l'envers de notre littérature, une face cachée diablement enjouée.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: GARNIERPARIS
• Date d'édition: 2011
• ISBN 10: 2351840712
• ISBN 13: 9782351840719
• Reliure: Poche
• Nombre de pages: 1