5. Written while the author was in debtors’ prison in London, it is considered “the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel”. “But these meditations only increased my disorder, and blew the fire that consumed me. I could not see this amiable criminal, so suddenly the first object of my love, and as suddenly of my just hate, on his knees, bedewing my hands with his tears, without relenting. This injunction probably proved of eminent service to me. “But as I snatched a look, the first gleam that struck me, was in general the dewy lustre of the whitest skin imaginable, which the sun playing upon made the reflection of it perfectly beamy. It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.
