Probably the best-known work of erotic fiction, John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was first published in London in 1748. More popularly known as Fanny Hill (the name of the novel’s female protagonist), due to its sexual content the book came to be one of the most controversial and banned books in the history of literature, a revelation in that it incorporated pornographic scenes in a novelistic form, a feat never previously undertaken in English literature. Following the young Fanny Hill from her village home to London, the novel depicts her sexual undoing.

Although this portfolio was produced at a time when Chimot was working on an extended series of titles for Deux-Rives, it is the sanguine (blood-red) drawings rather than the rather anodine colour images which lift this Fanny Hill portfolio above the average Chimot offerings of the 1950s.

The Chimot-illustrated edition of Mémoires de Fanny Hill was published by Deux-Rives in a limited numbered edition of 900 copies.