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Professor John Cleland is a consultant researcher from Hull who specialises in cardiology.
John Cleland (racing driver) is a retired Scottish auto racing driver.
John Cleland (1709-1789) was an English novelist.
Cleland was born in London and educated at Westminster School, then travelled abroad in the service of the British East India Company. His fortunes dwindled, he became indebted and spent time in a debtor's prison. In 1749 he published "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure," a work of unprecedented sexual explicitness for the time. The authorities drew up a warrant for his arrest and he pulled the book. He edited and republished the book a year later as the much toned down Fanny Hill. The controversial novel was unsurprisingly a best-seller. In 1966 it became the subject of a famous US Supreme Court judgment 383 U.S. 413 A Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, holding that under the US constitution a modicum of merit precluded its condemnation as obscene.
Bibliography
- Fanny Hill (1750)
- Memoirs of a Coxcomb (1751)
- The Surprises of Love (1764)
- other philological works