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John Cleland
John Cleland (24 September 1709 – 23 January 1789) was an English novelist best known for his fictional Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, whose eroticism led to his arrest. James Boswell called him "a sly, old malcontent".
Little is known about the early life of John Cleland. He was born in 1709 in Kingston upon Thames to parents William Cleland—a government official, former army officer, and friend of Alexander Pope—and Lucy DuPass. He was educated at Westminster School from 1721[page needed] to 1723. From 1728 he operated as a soldier in the service of the East India Company, living in Bombay until 1740, by which date he had attained a position as secretary to the Bombay Council as well as working as a junior merchant. In 1740 he travelled back to England[page needed] in a destitute condition, and from thence he travelled from city to city without having any defined employment.
John Cleland began courting the Portuguese in a vain attempt to re-establish the Portuguese East India Company around the year 1741.[page needed] In 1748, Cleland was arrested for an £840 debt (equivalent to a purchasing power of about £100,000 in 2005) and committed to Fleet Prison, where he remained for over a year. It was while he was in prison that Cleland finalised Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. The text probably existed in manuscript for a number of years before Cleland developed it for publication. The novel was published in two instalments, in November 1748 and February 1749. In March of that year, he was released from prison.
However, Cleland was arrested again in November 1749, along with the publishers and printer of Fanny Hill. In court, Cleland disavowed the novel and said that he could only "wish, from my Soul", that the book be "buried and forgot" (Sabor). The book was then officially withdrawn and not legally published again for over a hundred years. However, it continued to sell well in pirated editions. In March 1750, Cleland produced a highly bowdlerised version of the book, but it too was proscribed. Eventually, the prosecution against Cleland was dropped and the expurgated edition continued to sell legally.
None of Cleland's literary works provided him with a comfortable living and he was typically bitter about this. He publicly denounced his mother before her death in 1763 for not supporting him. Additionally, he exhibited a religious tendency toward Deism that branded him as a heretic. Meanwhile, he accused Laurence Sterne of "pornography" for Tristram Shandy.
In 1772, he told Boswell that he had written Fanny Hill while in Bombay, that he had written it for a dare, to show a friend it was possible to write about prostitution without using "vulgar" terms. At the time, Boswell reported that Cleland was a "fine, sly malcontent". Later, he would visit Cleland again and discover him living alone, shunned by all, with an "ancient and ugly woman" as his sole servant. Josiah Beckwith in 1781 said, after meeting him, that it was "no wonder" that he was thought to be a "sodomite". From 1782 until his death on 23 January 1789 Cleland lived in Petty France, Westminster, near his childhood home in St James's Place. He died unmarried and was buried in St Margaret's churchyard in London.
Cleland's account of when Fanny Hill was written is difficult. For one thing, the novel has allusions to other novels that were written and published the same year (including Shamela). Further, it takes part in the general Henry Fielding/Samuel Richardson battle, with Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded on one side and Joseph Andrews on the other.
Officially, Fanny Hill remained suppressed in an unexpurgated form until 1970 in the United Kingdom and 1963 in the United States. However, in 1966 it became the subject of a US Supreme Court judgment A Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, also known as Memoirs v. Massachusetts, holding that under the US Constitution a modicum of merit precluded its condemnation as obscene. In fact, the novel is now regarded as a "stylistic tour de force" and as a participant in the "making legible the bourgeois remapping of certain categories constitutive of 'woman', and then exposing that remapping as ludicrous" (Gautier x). It has an exceptionally lively style, contains profoundly playful and ironic questions about womanhood, and has a satirical exposition of love as commerce and pleasure as wealth.
John Cleland
John Cleland (24 September 1709 – 23 January 1789) was an English novelist best known for his fictional Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, whose eroticism led to his arrest. James Boswell called him "a sly, old malcontent".
Little is known about the early life of John Cleland. He was born in 1709 in Kingston upon Thames to parents William Cleland—a government official, former army officer, and friend of Alexander Pope—and Lucy DuPass. He was educated at Westminster School from 1721[page needed] to 1723. From 1728 he operated as a soldier in the service of the East India Company, living in Bombay until 1740, by which date he had attained a position as secretary to the Bombay Council as well as working as a junior merchant. In 1740 he travelled back to England[page needed] in a destitute condition, and from thence he travelled from city to city without having any defined employment.
John Cleland began courting the Portuguese in a vain attempt to re-establish the Portuguese East India Company around the year 1741.[page needed] In 1748, Cleland was arrested for an £840 debt (equivalent to a purchasing power of about £100,000 in 2005) and committed to Fleet Prison, where he remained for over a year. It was while he was in prison that Cleland finalised Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. The text probably existed in manuscript for a number of years before Cleland developed it for publication. The novel was published in two instalments, in November 1748 and February 1749. In March of that year, he was released from prison.
However, Cleland was arrested again in November 1749, along with the publishers and printer of Fanny Hill. In court, Cleland disavowed the novel and said that he could only "wish, from my Soul", that the book be "buried and forgot" (Sabor). The book was then officially withdrawn and not legally published again for over a hundred years. However, it continued to sell well in pirated editions. In March 1750, Cleland produced a highly bowdlerised version of the book, but it too was proscribed. Eventually, the prosecution against Cleland was dropped and the expurgated edition continued to sell legally.
None of Cleland's literary works provided him with a comfortable living and he was typically bitter about this. He publicly denounced his mother before her death in 1763 for not supporting him. Additionally, he exhibited a religious tendency toward Deism that branded him as a heretic. Meanwhile, he accused Laurence Sterne of "pornography" for Tristram Shandy.
In 1772, he told Boswell that he had written Fanny Hill while in Bombay, that he had written it for a dare, to show a friend it was possible to write about prostitution without using "vulgar" terms. At the time, Boswell reported that Cleland was a "fine, sly malcontent". Later, he would visit Cleland again and discover him living alone, shunned by all, with an "ancient and ugly woman" as his sole servant. Josiah Beckwith in 1781 said, after meeting him, that it was "no wonder" that he was thought to be a "sodomite". From 1782 until his death on 23 January 1789 Cleland lived in Petty France, Westminster, near his childhood home in St James's Place. He died unmarried and was buried in St Margaret's churchyard in London.
Cleland's account of when Fanny Hill was written is difficult. For one thing, the novel has allusions to other novels that were written and published the same year (including Shamela). Further, it takes part in the general Henry Fielding/Samuel Richardson battle, with Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded on one side and Joseph Andrews on the other.
Officially, Fanny Hill remained suppressed in an unexpurgated form until 1970 in the United Kingdom and 1963 in the United States. However, in 1966 it became the subject of a US Supreme Court judgment A Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, also known as Memoirs v. Massachusetts, holding that under the US Constitution a modicum of merit precluded its condemnation as obscene. In fact, the novel is now regarded as a "stylistic tour de force" and as a participant in the "making legible the bourgeois remapping of certain categories constitutive of 'woman', and then exposing that remapping as ludicrous" (Gautier x). It has an exceptionally lively style, contains profoundly playful and ironic questions about womanhood, and has a satirical exposition of love as commerce and pleasure as wealth.