Showing Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones by Erica Jong

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.