"The base map for "Fanny's Travels" was redrawn by Clarice Borio from "A Chart of the Atlantic Ocean" by Robert Sayer, 1775 ; the map of London was redrawn by Clarice Borio from "A Pocket Map of the Cities of London & Westminster," by Will Prader, 1731 ; Maps copyright © Clarice Borio, 1980"--Title page verso.

"Witty yet tender, bawdy but innocent, Fanny Hackabout-Jones is the unforgettable heroine of this major new novel by Erica Jong. The infant Fanny is discovered upon the doorstep of a great house in Wiltshire, where she grows to luscious young womanhood under the care of Lord and Lady Bellars. Circumstances force her to run away to London to "seek her fortune". On the way she falls in with witches, highwaymen, and pirates, men and women who cover the full spectrum of human virtue and vice. Forced to work in a London brothel for a time, she meets many of the notables of her own day--from William Hogarth and Joanathan Swift to John Cleland, the notorious author of Fanny Hill. Before long she is off on a series of amazing around-the-world adventures that teach her all she must know of life to survive and prosper as a woman. With Fanny, Erica Jong has added a fresh dimension to the art of the novel, creating both a faithful reflection of eighteenth-century attitudes and tone and a highly entertaining, wildly funny work of fiction about a woman whose consciousness and aspirations are thoroughly contemporary. Richly textured, full of humor, passion, and poetry, Fanny is as loving in its reconstruction of the manners and style of a vanished age as it is modern in its moral sensibility"--page 2 of cover.

The memoirs of a triumphantly liberated eighteenth-century woman--of twentieth-century consciousness and aspirations--retrace her reacy, reckless, and reambunctious course through seduction, prostitution, motherhood, piracy, and various liaisons with partners of both sexes.