Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) was a prominent eighteenth-century printer and businessman as well as an important and influential English novelist. He was also a prolific letter writer. This volume in the first ever full edition of Richardson's correspondence offers a fascinating glimpse of the writer in his final years - at the height of his professional powers but facing the challenging circumstances of physical decline and commercial conflict. The collection of miscellaneous letters addresses a variety of issues ranging from details of Richardson's printing operation to his mentorship of women writers including Sarah Fielding, Anna Meades and Frances Sheridan. Other correspondents of note include Samuel Johnson, Meta Klopstock, Thomas Sheridan and Tobias Smollett. Taken together this series of letters draws an intimate picture of Richardson's professional and personal circles as they exchange family gossip, business advice, literary anecdotes and news of the day.

Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel by English writer Samuel Richardson, first published in 1740. Richardson named his herione pamela from one of the characters from Philip Sidney' Arcadia. It tells the story of a beautiful 15-year-old maidservant named Pamela Andrews, whose country landowner master, Mr. B, makes unwanted and inappropriate advances towards her after the death of his mother. After Mr. B attempts unsuccessfully to seduce and rape her multiple times, he eventually rewards her virtue when he sincerely proposes an equitable marriage to her. Pamela, who is emotionally fragile and confused by Mr. B's manipulation, accepts his proposal. In the novel's second part, Pamela marries Mr. B and tries to acclimatize to upper-class society. The story, a best-seller of its time, was very widely read but was also criticized for its perceived licentiousness and glorification of abuse.

One of the most spectacular successes of the flourishing literary marketplace of eighteenth-century London, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world "into two different Parties, Pamelists and Anti-pamelists," even eclipsing the sensational factional politics of the day.