Books By John Cleland, Mint Editions - Author

John Cleland (1709-1789) was an English novelist. Born in Surrey, he was raised in London. His father William Cleland was a military officer and civil servant who, along with his wife Lucy, was a friend of such literary and political figures as Alexander Pope, Viscount Bolingbroke, and Horace Walpole. Cleland attended Westminster School for several years before being expelled for unknown reasons. He joined the British East India Company, traveling to Bombay in 1728 where he worked as a civil servant and lived until 1740. Upon his return to London, he was shunned by his family, and attempted to kickstart the Portuguese East India Company before being arrested for a significant unpaid debt. In Fleet Prison, Cleland wrote Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, an early pornographic novel which was published in two parts and 1748 and 1749, earning him a second arrest upon his release. Despite being barred from legal publication for over one hundred years, illegal and heavily edited copies of the book