Plot: Young woman becomes a prostitute in order to survive in London.

Why it's on the list: Published in 1749, Fanny Hill was known as "the first deliberately dirty novel in English." Once you get past the quaint language, the book is a perfect sex ed class: anatomically detailed and marked by exuberance, curiosity and, above all, "willingness." It helped spark the sexual revolution in America, as well as a major controversy. A Catholic priest in New York City went on a hunger strike to protest pornography, and in response the city tried to ban the 298-page book, which "describes in detail instances of lesbianism, female masturbation, the deflowering of a virgin, the seduction of a male virgin, the flagellation of male by female and female by male and other aberrant acts, as well as more than 20 acts of sexual intercourse between male and female, some of which are committed in the open presence of numerous other persons and some of which are instances of voyeurism." What's not to like? On March 21, 1966 the Supreme Court agreed that the book had literary merit and psychological value.

Excerpt: He still kept his post, yet unsated with enjoyment, and solacing in these so new delights, till his stiffness, which had scarce perceptibly remitted, being thoroughly recover'd to him, who had not once unsheath'd, he proceeded afresh to cleave and open to himself an entire entry into me, which was not a little made easy to him by the balsamic injection, with which he'd just plentifully moisten'd the whole internals of the passage; redoubling then the active energy of his thrusts, favour'd by the fervid appetency of my motions, the soft oil'd wards can no long stand so effectual a picklock, but yield, and open him an entrance: and now with conspiring nature, and my industry, strong to aid him, he pierces, penetrates, and at length, winning his way inch by inch, gets entirely in, and finally, a home-made thrust, sheaths it up to the guard....