John Cleland

author

John Cleland

1709–1789

Best known for writing Fanny Hill, he became one of the most notorious and talked-about novelists of 18th-century England. His life mixed literary ambition, financial trouble, and a lasting place in the history of censorship.

2 Audiobooks

Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749)

Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749)

by John Cleland

L'oeuvre de John Cleland: Mémoires de Fanny Hill, femme de plaisir Introduction, essai bibliographique par Guillaume Apollinaire

L'oeuvre de John Cleland: Mémoires de Fanny Hill, femme de plaisir Introduction, essai bibliographique par Guillaume Apollinaire

by John Cleland

About the author

Born in 1709 and dying in London in 1789, John Cleland was an English novelist remembered above all for Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as Fanny Hill. The book made him famous and infamous at the same time, and it remains the work most closely tied to his name.

Cleland wrote Fanny Hill in the late 1740s, and its explicit sexual content quickly brought trouble. He was arrested after its publication, and the novel later became well known not only as a piece of fiction but also as part of the long history of obscenity law and censorship in the English-speaking world.

Although he wrote other works, his reputation has largely rested on this single controversial novel. That unusual legacy has kept him important to readers interested in 18th-century literature, the history of the novel, and the changing limits of what societies allow books to say.