Description: The first collected edition of John Cleland's correspondence, this volume provides a rare insight into a significant literary life and into jobbing authorship in the eighteenth century. All known letters by and to Cleland are included entire, alongside letter excerpts, diary entries and documents in which he is discussed by friends, enemies, family members and distant acquaintances. The volume also includes Cleland's christening record, a manuscript essay composed by Cleland in French on 'Litterateurs', and the will of Cleland's mother Lucy, whose many codicils reveal her determination to prevent her profligate son from squandering her fortune. Interspersed throughout are telling remarks about Cleland from figures such as Alexander Pope, Samuel Foote, Claude-Pierre Patu, and, most revealing and intriguing of all, vignettes by the great biographer James Boswell. The volume makes several new attributions and demonstrates for the first time the extent of Cleland's participation in the European Enlightenment.
Brief description: Peter Sabor, Canada Research Chair at McGill University, is the co-general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (24 vols., in progress), co-editor of Samuel Richardson in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and the editor of the Oxford World's Classic's edition of Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1985).
Review Quotes: 'As someone who's written on Cleland and regularly teaches Memoirs, I'm delighted to have this collection of his correspondences, for all the reasons noted above, and especially for the many questions the letters answer about a complex and somewhat mysterious character. Cleland's correspondences will reward readers with a range of backgrounds and interests, while the editors' diligent scholarship and engaging prose supply necessary context for explaining, understanding, and interpreting a great many things about Cleland's life and work.' Aaron R. Hanlon, The Review of English Studies