SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761)

Born in Derbyshire in 1689. Belonged to a lower middle-class family. His father was a joiner( a type of carpenter) and his family were farmers. An established printer in London. Became a novelist thanks to his skill as a letter-writer. His first novel is “Pamela or Virtue Rewarded” (1740). Married his employer’s daughter Martha and they had six children but all of them died in childhood. His other most popular works are “Clarissa or History of Young Lady….” (1747-1748). His last novel is “The History of Sir Charles Grandison” (1753). Printed almost 500 different works, including magazines and journals. Died in London in 1761

PAMELA

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel, first published in 1740 . It is one of the most famous stories ever written of male stratagems to seduce a young girl thwarted by female prudence. It relates a squire’s repeated attempts on the virtue of one of his mother’s servants, and is told entirely in letters, written largely by Pamela herself. Pamela displays such a perfection in resisting her master’s advances that he ends by marrying her.

WHAT IS AN EPISTOLARY NOVEL? An Epistolary Novel is one written as a series of letters. Extremely popular during the eighteenth century and it was Richardson's “Pamela” that made them so. Richardson and other novelists of his time argued that …. on the one hand, the letter allowed the reader greater access to a character's thoughts, on the other, it allowed the writer to analyse the character’s psychological development Richardson claimed that he was writing "to the moment", that is, that Pamela's thoughts were recorded nearly simultaneously with her actions.

ABOUT “PAMELA” Published in two volumes in 1740. A second volume to the novel was published some time later in 1742. The first epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson. In “Pamela”, the letters are almost exclusively written by the heroine, restricting the reader's access to the other characters; we see them only through Pamela's point of view. Detailed picture of English domestic life in the early part of eighteenth century. In particular, Pamela’s “zeal for housewifery” is presented as a proper role of women in society. “ Richardson’s insistence upon well-defined feminine roles” was part of a common fear held during the 18th century that women were “ too bold”.

LITERARY SIGNIFICANCE Pamela was the bestseller of its time. It was read by countless buyers of the novel and was also read aloud in groups. The novel was also integrated into sermons as an example. It was even an early “multimedia” event, producing Pamela-themed cultural artifacts such as prints, paintings, and a set of playing cards decorated with lines from Richardson's works.

RICHARDSON'S REVISIONS The popularity of Richardson’s novel led to much public debate over its message and style ( there were two factions: Pamelists and anti-Pamelists). Richardson responded to some of the criticisms by revising the novel for each new edition; he even created a “reading group” of women to advise him. Some of the most significant changes that he made were his alterations to Pamela’s vocabulary. In the first edition her diction is that of a lower-class maid, but in later editions Richardson made her more linguistically middle-class by removing the lower-class idioms from her speech. In this way, he made her marriage to Mr. B less scandalous as she appeared to be more his equal in education.

THE SUCCESS OF “ PAMELA” Richardson’s readers were enchanted by … the close identification the epistolary novel induced with the heroine in her distress, the unparalleled attention Richardson paid to the details of daily life while the pervasive tone of moral rectitude provided a convenient and much-needed justification for the otherwise dubious taste for prose fiction. Pamela was a huge success and became something of a cult novel. By May 1741 it reached a fourth edition and was dramatized in Italy by Goldoni, as well as in England.