John Cleland - Later Life

Later Life

None of Cleland's literary works provided him with a comfortable living, and he was typically bitter about this. He publicly denounced his mother before her death in 1763 for not supporting him. Additionally, he exhibited a religious tendency toward Deism that branded him as a heretic. He also accused Laurence Sterne of "pornography" for Tristram Shandy.

In 1772, he told Boswell that he had written Fanny Hill while in Bombay, that he had written it on a dare, to show a friend of his that it was possible to write about prostitution without using any "vulgar" terms. At the time, Boswell reported that Cleland was a "fine sly malcontent." Later, he would visit Cleland again and discover him living alone, shunned by all, with only an ancient and ugly woman as his sole servant. Josiah Beckwith in 1781 said, after meeting him, that it was "no wonder" that he was supposed a "sodomite." Cleland died unmarried in 1789 and was buried in St. Margaret's churchyard in London.