The Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Fanny M (1759), by an anonymous author, is one of the earliest so-called “whore’s memoirs”.  A picaresque story, it is the biography of Fanny Murray, who is depicted as a plucky, working-class girl, who rises in English society through a series of lovers.  Apparently, she did not write the book, nor was she even consulted about it.  Some questions have been raised about the memoir’s veracity, though overall it appears to be true.

Fanny Murray (1729-1778) was a celebrated sex worker in eighteenth century London.  Seduced by an English nobleman, by the age of 17 she was a celebrity with many wealthy and titled men as her customers.  (She also had a taste for criminals).  Novels, ships, racehorses and cocktails were named after her.  Women adopted the “Fanny Murray cap”, and men carried tiny portraits of her in their pocket watches.  Giacomo Casanova mentions her in his autobiography, and the novel Fanny Hill was in part inspired by her.  After a time, she left sex work behind completely and married an actor, with whom she had a long and happy marriage.  She later reappeared as part of the scandal around the Member of Parliament John Wilkes when she had The Anatomy of a Woman, a collection of erotic verse,  dedicated to her by Wilkes (and John Potter).

The Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Fanny M is an enjoyable read, if a little difficult due to the contemporary language.

A quote about Fanny Murray’s breasts:

“….those fair hemispheres, those orbs of more than snowy whiteness, which seem to pant for release from irksome robes”.

(Above is a painting of Murray by Adriaen Carpentiers).

S. Gray

April 2026