John Cleland (1709-1789) was an English novelist best known for his work Fanny Hill, or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Son of a first officer in the British army and later a Scottish civil servant, William Cleland, he moved in the best literary and artistic circles of London. John Cleland entered Westminster School in 1721, which he left in 1723 apparently because of his misconduct. He joined the British East India Company and settled in Bombay from 1728 to 1740. He returned to London when his father fell ill and died. After an attempt to re-found the Portuguese East India Company, he was imprisoned for debt, at which time he finished writing Fanny Hill, which was published in two parts (in 1748 and 1749), although censorship and censorship soon intervened. prohibition. He wrote other works, but none brought him as much fame as this one.