Édouard-Henri Avril’s Fanny Hill: Illustrating Desire, Rebellion, and the Secret Life of 18th-Century Erotica

In the shadowy margins of the nineteenth century European art flourished a world of the erotic illustrations; exquisite, scandalous, and often anonymous. Édouard-Henri Avril, a French illustrator born in Algiers in 1849, is a prolific artist in the erotic genre at the turn of the century. He published under the pseudonym of ‘Paul Avril’. Some of the most delicate and expressive erotic images of the fin-de-siècle art came from Avril’s imagination and his hand. One of his most compelling works is a series of twelve illustrations made in 1906 for the eighteenth century novel ‘Fanny Hill; or the Memoirs of a Woman Pleasures’ written by John Cleland and first published in London in 1749. Avril’s illustrations serve not only as a titillating visual accompaniment to Cleland’s prose but also as a daring artistic statement, one that interrogates morality, sensuality, and the power of the forbidden image in a deeply repressive age.

Fig.1  The Ceremonial of Fanny's initiation

Banned

‘Fanny Hill’ was the first English prose pornography. Its ornate, euphemistic language and picaresque narrative follow the sexual education and adventures of Frances ‘Fanny’ Hill. Fanny is a young woman who rises from poverty and a state of orphanhood to erotic sophistication. At age 14 she loses her parents to smallpox and comes to London seeking work as a maid, but ends up in a brothel. It’s a classic tale of innocence and experience. The novel was banned almost immediately for obscenity and remained controversial for centuries. And perhaps it still is today. When its popularity re-emerged in the late nineteenth century France, it found a new visual interpreter in the artworks of Avril.

Fig.2  Mr Croft's attempt to seduce Fanny

Eroticism With Elegance

The irony is that while the novel ‘Fanny Hill’ was banned on the account of immorality, its protagonist was a far more reflective, intelligent, and emotionally complex young woman than many of the heroines of so-called ‘respectable’ nineteenth century fiction. Avril seemed to have recognised this, and his illustrations elevate the novel’s tone. It’s a wonderful way to bridge eroticism with elegance, desire with dignity, and sensuality with intelligence.

Fig.3  Polly Phillips and Young Italian

‘Luxury Erotica'

Avril’s ‘Fanny Hill’ series of illustrations was created for limited and clandestine editions of the novel and thus this belongs to the tradition of ‘luxury erotica’; an art created not for mass consumption but for discreet collectors, bibliophiles, and the elite. Printed privately, often with false publishing information, these books existed in a secret world where art and pornography, classicism and carnality, coexisted in a beautiful tension.

Fig.4  Charles plucks Fanny's virgin flower

In the Premium version of the article more on the influences of Rococo and from Neoclassical aesthetics, the rebellious nature of Avril's illustrations, what distinguishes Fanny Hill from other famous erotic novels, the sophisticated depiction of women, the scenarios of reciprocal pleasure, the inclusion of humour, and more...!!

Click HERE for the sepia-toned classical eroticism in Avril’s ‘De Figuris Veneris’

What do you think about Avril's illustrations for Fanny Hill? Leave your reaction in the comment box below...!!