Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones | Literary Precedents

Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones Literary Precedents

Jong draws most frankly on Tom Jones (1749). Fanny picks "Jones" when she needs a surname and is, like Fielding's hero, a foundling of uncertain parentage who leaves a country home for startling adventures on the road to London and victimization as a wideeyed innocent in the big city. Defoe's Moll Flanders (1722) also exercises some influence on characterization and milieu. Fanny's narrative is written on the internal pretext of setting straight the story told in John Cleland's erotic classic Fanny Hill: or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Fanny Hackabout-Jones is angry that Cleland — who was her client one night in the brothel — misrepresented her in his book.