John Cleland, soon to be known for…
1750 CE
Cleland had been arrested in 1748, for a debt of eight hundred and forty pounds (equivalent to a purchasing power of about one hundred thousand pounds in 2005) and committed to Fleet Prison, where he remained for over a year.
It was while he was in prison that Cleland finalized Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.
The text probably existed in manuscript for a number of years before Cleland developed it for publication.
The novel had been published in two installments, in November 1748 and February 1749.
Released from prison in March of that year, Cleland had been arrested the following November along with the publishers and printer of Fanny Hill.
In court, Cleland had disavowed the novel.
The book was then officially withdrawn, never to be legally published again for over a hundred years.
However, it continues to sell well and to be published in pirated editions.
In March 1750, Cleland produces a highly bowdlerized version of the book, but it, too, is proscribed; eventually, the prosecution against Cleland is dropped, and the expurgated edition continues to sell legally.