A young country lass is abandoned in London without any money or supervision. Having come there with the intention of entering into service, she is instead unwittingly swept into prostitution because she is so lovely and there is a strong market for maidenhead. By dumb luck, Fanny manages to hold onto her virginity just long enough to give it to Charles, who remains the love of her life despite her subsequent dalliances. Fanny and Charles are separated against their will, and her life follows an increasingly lurid trajectory as she becomes more than one gentlemans kept woman, works in a brothel, picks up a john on the street, indulges various fetishes, witnesses a male homosexual encounter through a peep hole, and eventually inherits a sizeable fortune from an elderly gentleman with whom she consorted until his end of days. When she and Charles re-encounter each other, Fannys new wealth enables them to be together, and so she ends respectably married and maternal after all. The sex in this book is graphic. The descriptions of engines and chinks are overblown and hilarious. Fanny and her paramours certainly seem to enjoy themselves, and simultaneous orgasm is always achieved! There is never a violent or scary or even utterly abject moment, so a life of prostitution is quite romanticized here.
The book is a quick read and funny. Fanny is a stereotypical prostitute with a heart of gold who is rewarded with middle class respectability. Not realistic, but definitely entertaining.