The woman of pleasure was not a figment of John Cleland’s imagination. She lived and moved among the colorful figures of 18th century England. And she had her male counterpart: the coxcomb . . . man of pleasure.
John Cleland knew this life intimately. In Memoirs of a Coxcomb, as in Fanny Hill, he wrote of it with complete frankness and honesty.
Suppressed until recently, it is a major work of exotica.
John Cleland was penniless when he met Ralph Griffith, a bookseller and became partners in a publishing venture. Cleland was to distill his experiences and write a book called Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, a novel that was to become the most sensational piece of erotica in English literature. In 1747 Fanny Hill was launched into circulation and immortality.
Both men achieved their financial objectives - then came the repercussions.
Eighteenth century English aristocrats were austere on the surface and licentious underneath. The members of the Privy Council asked how Cleland could be silenced. The answer was simple. He needed money. So the Privy Council gave him a pension exacting his promise not to write a sequel to Fanny Hill.
For a while the scheme worked. Cleland retired to the country, amusing himself by writing political pamphlets, poetry, and plays. None of Cleland’s neighbors realized that his peaceful, scholarly man was England’s foremost living pornographer.
