The Fruit-Shop, a Tale is an anonymous work of satire with erotic themes printed at London by C. Moran in 1765. [1] A second edition was printed in 1766 for J. Harrison, near Covent Garden. [2] The text is, for the most part, an allegorical and discursive disquisition on the "Fruit-Shop", as the author calls woman, or rather on those parts of her which are more particularly connected with fruit-bearing. [3]
To the first volume there is a curious, roughly engraved frontispiece, signed C. Trim fect., representing a garden scene; before a temple of oriental design stands a yew tree shaped like a phallus, above which two Cupids hold a wreath in form of the female organ; a man, dressed in academic robes, and leaning on an ass, points to the phallic tree, while a boy squirts at him with a syringe. [4] The chief figure in this frontispiece is intended for the "distinguished personage" to whom the volume is dedicated: Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy (the book on which the ass treads in the frontispiece). [5]
The work is divided into four parts. [3] The first treats of the Garden of Eden, its probable position on the globe, etc. [3] The second part relates to what happened after the Fall, the invention of the Fig-leaf, etc., and goes on to treat of Love, Marriage, Cuckoldom, and "The Unnaturalists, or Deserters of the Fruit-Shop". [3] Part III consists of a review of the "unwearied passion for the Fruit-Shop" among the Romans, beginning with Jupiter and ending with Julius Caesar. [3] In the fourth part are chapters on "Odd Conceptions", Celibacy, and Flagellation as a "Bye-Way to Heaven". [3] Other matters discoursed upon are Macerations, "Mahomet no Fool", Platonism, Eunuchism, and the "Philo-gonists, the truly Orthodox". [6]
The Appendix and Notes close the second volume. [6] In them is described "The Fruit-Shop of St. James' Street", where "matters never proceed further in this chaste domain than to a kiss or a feel, transiently and with the greatest decorum"; the object, title, etc., of the work are explained; and, finally various quotations, in different languages, upon women's breasts. [7]
According to Henry Spencer Ashbee, "The manner and humour of Swift and Sterne seem to have been aimed at; sarcasms and covert inuendos[ sic ] on living personages are frequent; and digressions are freely indulged in; but the wit and true satire of these writers are never attained." [3]
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