107- ) English Literature

107-) English Literature 

John Gay

John Gay (born June 30 , 1685, Barnstaple, Devon, Eng.—died Dec. 4, 1732, London) was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names. The Beggar’s Opera , a work distinguished by good-humoured satire and technical assurance.

Early life

Gay was born in Barnstaple, England, last of five children of William Gay (died 1695) and Katherine (died 1694), daughter of Jonathan Hanmer, "the leading Nonconformist divine of the town" as founder of the Independent Dissenting congregation in Barnstaple. The Gay family- "fairly comfortable... though far from rich"- lived in "a large house, called the Red Cross, on the corner of Joy Street". The Gay family was "of respectable antiquity" in North Devon, associated with the manor of Goldsworthy at Parkham and with the parish of Frithelstock (where the senior line remained, resident at the priory Cloister Hall with its lands, until 1823) and became "powerful and numerous" in the town, "established among Barnstaple's leading families for generations". Gay's great-grandfather, Anthony Gay, served as Mayor; his wife, Elizabeth, was daughter of the merchant and three-time Mayor of Barnstaple, Richard Beaple.

A member of an ancient but impoverished Devonshire family, Gay was educated at the free grammar school in Barnstaple. He was apprenticed to a silk mercer in London but was released early from his indentures and, after a further short period in Devonshire, returned to London, where he lived most of his life. Among his early literary friends were Aaron Hill and Eustace Budgell, whom he helped in the production of The British Apollo, a question-and-answer journal of the day. Gay’s journalistic interests are clearly seen in a pamphlet, The Present State of Wit (1711), a survey of contemporary periodical publications.

On leaving school- his elder brother, Jonathan, an Army officer, having inherited the family property- Gay was apprenticed to a silk mercer in London, but being weary, according to Samuel Johnson, "of either the restraint or the servility of his occupation", he soon returned to Barnstaple, where he was educated by his uncle, the Rev. John Hanmer, the nonconformist minister of the town. He then returned to London.

Early career

His first play, The Mohocks (1712), had censorship issues. The following year he wrote a comedy The Wife of Bath, which appeared at the Drury Lane Theatre.

The dedication of his Rural Sports (1713) to Alexander Pope began a lasting friendship with him. In 1714, Gay wrote The Shepherd's Week, a series of six pastorals drawn from English rustic life. Pope had urged him to undertake this in order to ridicule the Arcadian pastorals of Ambrose Philips, who had been praised by a short-lived contemporary publication The Guardian, to the neglect of Pope's claim to be the first pastoral writer of the age and the true English Theocritus. Gay's pastorals achieved this goal and his ludicrous pictures of the English country lads and their loves were found to be entertaining on their own account.

In 1713 Gay and Pope both joined the Scriblerus Club, a group of Tory writers supportive of first minister Robert Harley that also included John Arbuthnot, Jonathan Swift and Thomas Parnell.

Diplomatic service

In 1714 Gay was appointed secretary to the Earl of Clarendon the new British ambassador to the Electorate of Hanover through the influence of Swift. However the death of Queen Anne three months later put an end to his hopes of official employment. The mission had been an unsuccessful attempt by the Tories to ingratiate themselves with Elector George, heir to the throne, who was angry that the Peace of Utrecht had led to Britain's abandoning its allies in the war against France and suspected that the Tory leadership favoured the Jacobites.

The Hanoverian succession led to the ousting of the Harley Ministry and establishment of the Whig oligarchy and Gay never held a government post again. While in Hanover he met Caroline of Ansbach, the future Princess of Wales, and Henrietta Howard, who would become a close friend of his.

Return to London

In 1715, probably with some help from Pope, Gay produced The What D'Ye Call It? , a dramatic skit on contemporary tragedy, with special reference to Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd. This appeared on 23 February 1715 as an afterpiece at Drury Lane to Nicholas Rowe's tragedy Jane Shore. It left the public so ignorant of its inner meaning that Lewis Theobald and Benjamin Griffin published a Complete Key to What D'Ye Call It to explain it. The play also featured a ballad, Twas When the Seas Were Roaring, co-written with George Frideric Handel, which became popular in its own right.

In 1716 appeared his Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, a poem in three books, for which he acknowledged receiving several hints from Swift. It contains graphic and humorous descriptions of the London of that period, depicting the city with photographic accuracy and acting as a guide to the upper-class and upper-middle-class walkers of society. By taking a mock-heroic form, Gay's poem was able to poke fun at the notion of complete reformation of street civility, while also proposing an idea of reform in terms of the attitude towards walking. In January 1717 he produced a comedy, Three Hours After Marriage, which was thought to be grossly indecent (without being amusing) and a failure. He had assistance from Pope and John Arbuthnot, but they allowed it to be assumed that Gay was the sole author.[4]

By 1717 Gay was associated with George, Princes of Wales, who as part of the Whig Split had set up a rival court to his father the King which was frequented by opposition Whigs and Tories.[17] In 1718 he collaborated with Handel on the masque Acis and Galatea for which he supplied the libretto.

Patrons

Gay had numerous patrons, and in 1720 he published Poems on Several Occasions by subscription, taking in £1000 or more. In that year James Craggs, the secretary of state , presented him with some South Sea stock. Gay, disregarding the advice of Pope and others of his friends, invested all his money in South Sea stock, and, holding on to the end of the South Sea Bubble, he lost everything. The shock is said to have made him dangerously ill. His friends did not fail him at this juncture. He had patrons in William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, in the third Earl of Burlington, who constantly entertained him at Chiswick or at Burlington House, and in the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. He was a frequent visitor with Pope, and received unvarying kindness from William Congreve and John Arbuthnot.

In 1727 he wrote for six-year-old Prince William, later the Duke of Cumberland, Fifty-one Fables in Verse, for which he naturally hoped to gain some preferment, although he has much to say in them of the servility of courtiers and the vanity of court honours. He was offered the situation of gentleman-usher to the Princess Louisa, who was also still a child. He refused this offer, all his friends seemingly having regarded it- "for no very obvious reason"- as an indignity. His friends thought him unfairly neglected, but Gay, who had never rendered any special services to the court, had nevertheless been given a sinecure as lottery commissioner with a salary of £150 a year in 1722, and from 1722 to 1729 had lodgings in the palace at Whitehall.

Literary Career

Poet and playwright John Gay was born in Devon to an aristocratic though impoverished family. Unable to afford university, Gay went to London to apprentice as a draper instead. While in London, he began writing journalism, including the pamphlet The Present State of Wit (1711), a survey of contemporary periodicals and authors. Rural Sports (1713) is generally considered his first important poem; the poem is ostensibly pastoral, but the speaker discovers that predatory instincts undergird much of nature. By 1714, Gay had started corresponding with Alexander Pope and become a member of the Scriblerus Club, a group that included Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell, and Lord Oxford. Gay’s publications dating from this time include the poems Trivia: Or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716) and The Shepherd’s Week (1714). The Scriblerus Club influenced Gay’s major plays of this period, The What D’Ye Call It (1715) and Three Hours After Marriage (1717), which was frequently linked to Pope.

 Gay was more or less dependent on patronage his whole life and lived in various semi-employed states with a number of aristocrats. Many works, such as the Fables (1727, 1738), were written to win the favor of specific members of court. Though relying on the generosity of patrons such as the Duchess of Queensberry, Gay also earned money from his plays, especially The Beggar’s Opera (1728), which enjoyed unprecedented success. Running for 62 performances, the opera inspired numerous imitations and parodies and provided the basis for Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 20th-century Threepenny Opera (1928). Allegedly satirizing then-prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, Gay’s play gained notoriety and made staging its sequel, Polly, impossible until 1777. The Beggar’s Opera was in some ways the culmination of Gay’s career. In 1730, he moved to the Queensberry estate in Burlington Gardens, where he spent the last years of his life in partial isolation. He restaged an early effort, The Wife of Bath (1713, revised 1730), and continued writing plays, though he didn’t attempt to get them produced. After his sudden death from fever, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Pope was a pallbearer and contributed an epitaph to Gay’s memorial. Above it are Gay’s own words: “Life is a jest; and all things show it / I thought so once; but now I know it.”

From 1712 to 1714 he was steward in the household of the Duchess of Monmouth, which gave him leisure and security to write. He had produced a burlesque of the Miltonic style, Wine, in 1708, and in 1713 his first important poem, Rural Sports, appeared. This is a descriptive and didactic work in two short books dealing with hunting and fishing but containing also descriptions of the countryside and meditations on the Horatian theme of retirement. In it he strikes a characteristic note of delicately absurd artificiality, while a deliberate disproportion between language and subject pays comic dividends and sets a good-humoured and sympathetic tone. His finest poem, Trivia: or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716), displays an assured and precise craftsmanship in which rhythm and diction underline whatever facet of experience he is describing. A sophisticated lady crossing the street, for example:

The couplet does not aim to startle the reader, yet the experience is perfectly conveyed. Another couplet, on the presence of spring felt throughout the whole of creation, states:

Here the effect is at once satirical, sympathetic, and—in its correlation of the animal and human kingdoms—philosophical. It is in such delicate probing of the surface of social life that Gay excels. The Shepherd’s Week (1714) is a series of mock classical poems in pastoral setting; the Fables (two series, 1727 and 1738) are brief, octosyllabic illustrations of moral themes, often satirical in tone.

Gay’s poetry was much influenced by that of Alexander Pope, who was a contemporary and close friend. Gay was a member, together with Pope, Jonathan Swift, and John Arbuthnot, of the Scriblerus Club, a literary group that aimed to ridicule pedantry. These friends contributed to two of Gay’s satirical plays: The What D’ye Call It (1715) and Three Hours After Marriage (1717).

His most successful play was The Beggar’s Opera, produced in London on Jan. 29, 1728, by the theatre manager John Rich at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre. It ran for 62 performances (not consecutive, but the longest run then known). A story of thieves and highwaymen, it was intended to mirror the moral degradation of society and, more particularly, to caricature the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole and his Whig administration. It also made fun of the prevailing fashion for Italian opera. The play was stageworthy, however, not so much because of its pungent satire but because of its effective situations and “singable” songs. The production of its sequel, Polly, was forbidden by the lord chamberlain (doubtless on Walpole’s instructions); but the ban was an excellent advertisement for the piece, and subscriptions for copies of the printed edition made more than £1,000 profit for the author. (It was eventually produced in 1777, when it had a moderate success.) His Beggar’s Opera was successfully transmitted into the 20th century by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill as Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera).

“Honest” John Gay lost most of his money through disastrous investment in South Sea stock, but he nonetheless left £6,000 when he died. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, next to the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, and his epitaph was written by Alexander Pope.

The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera in three acts by John Gay, performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London, in 1728 and published in the same year. The work combines comedy and political satire in prose interspersed with songs set to contemporary and traditional English, Irish, Scottish, and French tunes. In it, Gay portrays the lives of a group of thieves and prostitutes in 18th-century London. The action centres on Peachum, a fence for stolen goods; Polly, his daughter; and Macheath, a highwayman. Gay caricatures the government, fashionable society, marriage, and Italian operatic style. Particularly evident are parallels made between the moral degeneracy of the opera’s protagonists and contemporary highborn society.

He certainly did nothing to conciliate the favour of the government by his next work, The Beggar's Opera, a ballad opera produced on the 29 January 1728 by John Rich, in which Sir Robert Walpole was caricatured. This famous piece, which was said to have made "Rich gay and Gay rich", was an innovation in many respects.

The satire of the play has a double allegory. The character of Peachum was inspired by the thief-taker Jonathan Wild, executed in 1725, and the principal figure of Macheath reflected memories of the French highwayman, Claude Duval, whose execution had created a sensation in London, and who exemplified the flamboyance and gallantry of Gay's literary hero. Gay's decision to launch the work was probably also influenced by the huge interest that Jack Sheppard, a cockney housebreaker, had created in all things relating to Newgate Prison. However, the character of Peachum was also understood to represent Robert Walpole, who, like Wild, was seen as a public but morally dubious character, and whose government had been tolerant of Wild's thievery and the South Sea directors' escape from punishment. Under cover of the thieves and highwaymen who figured in it was disguised a satire on society, for Gay made it plain that in describing the moral code of his characters he had in mind the corruptions of the governing class. Part of the success of The Beggar's Opera may have been due to the acting of Lavinia Fenton, afterwards Duchess of Bolton, in the part of Polly Peachum. The airs of the Beggar's Opera in part allude to well-known popular ballads, and Gay's lyrics sometimes play with their wording in order to amuse and entertain the audience.

The play ran for sixty-two nights. Swift is said to have suggested the subject, and Pope and Arbuthnot were constantly consulted while the work was in progress, but Gay must be regarded as the sole author. After seeing an early version of the work, Swift was optimistic of its commercial prospects but famously warned Gay to be cautious with his earnings : "I beg you will be thrifty and learn to value a shilling."

Later career

He wrote a sequel, Polly, relating the adventures of Polly Peachum in the West Indies; its production was forbidden by the Lord Chamberlain, no doubt through the influence of Walpole. This act of "oppression" caused no loss to Gay. It proved an excellent advertisement for Polly, which was published by subscription in 1729, and brought its author several thousand pounds. The Duchess of Queensberry was dismissed from court for enlisting subscribers in the palace. In 1730 Gay's substantially rewritten version of his 1713 play The Wife of Bath appeared at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, lasting for three nights.

The Duke of Queensberry gave Gay a home, and the duchess continued her affectionate patronage until Gay's death in London on 4 December 1732. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. The epitaph on his tomb is by Pope, and is followed by Gay's own mocking couplet:

Life is a jest, and all things show it,

I thought so once, but now I know it.

  

106-) English Literature

106) English Literature

Samuel Richardson 

 Epistolary novel

Richardson was a skilled letter writer and his talent traces back to his childhood. Throughout his whole life, he would constantly write to his various associates.   Richardson had a "faith" in the act of letter writing, and believed that letters could be used to accurately portray character traits.   He quickly adopted the epistolary novel form, which granted him "the tools, the space, and the freedom to develop distinctly different characters speaking directly to the reader".  The epistolary form gave Richardson, as well as others, the means to impact his audience more effectively as readers were able to get a more intimate insight into a novel’s characters. This allowed a stronger sense of engagement with the text to develop. Richardson structured his epistolary work to offer multiple perspectives so readers could interpret the text in varied ways. However, Richardson “hoped he would eventually convince his audience to read in the ways that he chose—ways that he hoped would lead to moral regeneration.”   These epistolary novels were a “moral project” as well as a literary one; Susan Whyman writes that Richardson’s “goal was not only to reform reading practices but to reform lives as well.”  

In his first novel, Pamela, he explored the various complexities of the title character's life, and the letters allow the reader to witness her develop and progress over time.   The novel was an experiment, but it allowed Richardson to create a complex heroine through a series of her letters.[9]: 239  When Richardson wrote Clarissa, he had more experience in the form and expanded the letter writing to four different correspondents, which created a complex system of characters encouraging each other to grow and develop over time.   However, the villain of the story, Lovelace, is also involved in the letter writing, and this leads to tragedy.   Leo Braudy described the benefits of the epistolary form of Clarissa as, "Language can work: letters can be ways to communicate and justify".  By the time Richardson writes Grandison, he transforms the letter writing from telling of personal insights and explaining feelings into a means for people to communicate their thoughts on the actions of others and for the public to celebrate virtue. The letters are no longer written for a few people, but are passed along in order for all to see.   The characters of Pamela, Clarissa, and Grandison are revealed in a personal way, with the first two using the epistolary form for "dramatic" purposes, and the last for "celebratory" purposes.  

Works

Novels

Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740–1761) – revised through 14 editions

Pamela in her Exalted Condition (1741–1761) – the sequel to Pamela, usually published together in 4 Volumes – revised through 12 editions

Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (1747–61) – revised through 4 editions

Letters and Passages Restored to Clarissa (1751)

The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753–1761) – restored and corrected through 4 editions

The History of Mrs. Beaumont – A Fragment – unfinished

Supplements

A Reply to the Criticism of Clarissa (1749) , Meditations on Clarissa (1751)

The Case of Samuel Richardson (1753) , An Address to the Public (1754)

2 Letters Concerning Sir Charles Grandison (1754) ,A Collection of Moral Sentiments (1755) , Conjectures on Original Composition in a Letter to the Author 1st and 2nd editions (1759) (with Edward Young)As editor , Aesop's Fables – 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions (1739–1753) , The Negotiations of Thomas Roe (1740) , A Tour through Great Britain (4 Volumes) by Daniel Defoe – 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th editions (1742–1761) , The Life of Sir William Harrington (knight) by Anna Meades – revised and corrected

Other works

The Apprentice's Vade Mecum (1734)

A Seasonable Examination of the Pleas and Pretensions Of the Proprietors of, and Subscribers to, Play-Houses, Erected in Defiance of the Royal License. With Observations on the Printed Case of the Players belonging to Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden Theatres (1735)

Verses Addressed to Edward Cave and William Bowyer (1736)

A compilation of letters published as a manual, with directions on How to think and act justly and prudently in the Common Concerns of Human Life (1741)

The Familiar Letters 6 Editions (1741–1755)

The Life and heroic Actions of Balbe Berton, Chevalier de Grillon (2 volumes) 1st and 2nd Editions by Lady Marguerite de Lussan (as assistant translator of an anonymous female translator)

No. 97, The Rambler (1751)

Posthumous works

6 Letters upon Duelling (1765) , Letter from an Uncle to his Nephew (1804)

-Samuel_Richardson_by_Joseph_Highmore

Richardson learned to know his characters, so intimately, so thoroughly, as to triumph over his prolixity, repetitiveness, moralizing, and sentimentality. Equally important was his development of the epistolary novel. Other writers had used letters as a storytelling device, but few if any of Richardson’s predecessors had approximated his skill in recording the external events and incidents of a narrative along with the intimate and instant revelation of a character’s thought and emotions in the process of their taking place, a method so flowing, so fluid, so flexible, as almost to anticipate the modern technique of stream of consciousness. Richardson’s works, along with those of his three great contemporaries—Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Laurence Sterne—prepared the way for the great achievements of the nineteenth century English novel.

Richardson himself stated quite clearly, in his prefaces to Pamela and Clarissa, and in his letters, that his purpose as an author was to depict “real life” and “in a manner probable, natural, and lively.” At the same time, however, he wanted his books to be thought of as instruments of manners and morals intended to “teach great virtues.” Fiction, he insisted, should be useful and instructive; it should edify readers of all ages, but particularly should be relevant and appealing to youth. Richardson observed with passionate interest and recorded with a genius for infinite detail the relationships between men and women, the concerns of daily life, and the particular class and caste distinctions of mid-eighteenth century England. This intense interest in the usual sets him apart from such predecessors as Daniel Defoe or the seventeenth century writers of prose romances. In all of his novels, and particularly, perhaps, in Pamela, the relationship between his main characters has about it the quality of traditional romantic love; at the same time, the novels are so realistically grounded in the accumulation of a mass of day-to-day realistic details as to create a remarkable sense of authenticity. Characteristic of this creation of the illusion of real life is the account, possibly apocryphal, of Pamela’s being read aloud by the local blacksmith to a small group of the village’s inhabitants on the village green; finally, when Pamela’s triumph by her marriage to Squire B. was assured, the villagers indulged in a spree of thanksgiving and merrymaking; it was their Pamela who had conquered.

Richardson, then, was both a conscious, self-avowed realist, and also an equally conscious, self-avowed teacher and moralist. This dualism permeates all three of his novels and is perhaps most apparent—and transparent—in Pamela. It is, indeed, Richardson’s hallmark, and is the source both of his strength and weakness as a novelist.

Analysis of Samuel Richardson’s Novels

Perhaps Richardson’s (19 August 1689 – 4 July 1761) most important contribution to the development of the novel was his concern for the nonexceptional problems of daily conduct, the relationships between men and women, and the specific class-and-caste distinctions of mid-eighteenth century England. He sought and found his material from life as he had observed and reflected upon it from childhood and youth as a member of the working class in a highly socially conscious society to his position as an increasingly successful and prosperous printer and publisher. He contemplated this material with passionate interest and recorded it with a kind of genius for verisimilitude that sets him apart from most of his predecessors. What one critic has called Richardson’s “almost rabid concern for the details” of daily life and his continuing “enrichment and complication” of customary human relationship account in large measure for his enormous contemporary popularity: In Pamela, for example, the relationships between Pamela and Squire B. are so persistently grounded in the minutiae of ordinary life as to create a sense of reality seldom achieved in prose fiction prior to Richardson; at the same time, the outcome of the emotional and physical tugs-of-war between the two main characters and the happy outcome of all the intrigue, sensationalism, and hugger-mugger have about them the quality of conventional romantic love.

Pamela

"Pamela" is a novel that tells the story of a 15-year-old maidservant named Pamela whose employer, Mr. B, makes unwanted advances towards her after the death of his mother. Pamela is determined to protect her virtue and repeatedly rejects his advances. This leads to a series of events, including her attempted escape, kidnapping and imprisonment. Ultimately, impressed by her virtue and integrity, Mr. B reforms and proposes marriage to her, elevating her to a higher social status. The novel is a pioneering work in the genre of the novel and is noted for its detailed psychological insight into the characters.

Reduced to its simplest terms, the “story” or “plot” of the first volume of Pamela is too well known to warrant more than the briefest summary. The heroine, a young servant girl, is pursued by her master, Squire B., but maintains her virginity in spite of his repeated and ingenious efforts, until the would-be seducer, driven to desperation, marries her. Thus is Pamela’s virtue rewarded. The continuation of the novel in volume 2, a decided letdown, is virtually plotless, highly repetitive, and highlighted only by Squire B.’s excursion into infidelity. Volumes 3 and 4, written partly because of Richardson’s indignation with the various parodies of the first volume of Pamela, have even less to recommend them. Labeled as “virtually unreadable” by one modern commentator, even Richardson’s most understanding criticbiographers, T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, have dismissed them as “Richardson at his worst, pompous, proper, proud of himself, and above all dull.”

Despite his frequent excursions into bathos and sentimentality, when he is not indulging in sermonizings on ethics and morality, the Richardson of the first volume of Pamela writes vigorously, effectively, and with keen insight and intimate understanding of his characters. Pamela contains many powerful scenes that linger long in the reader’s memory: the intended rape scene, the sequence in which Pamela considers suicide, even parts of the marriage scene (preceded by some prodigious feats of letter-writing to her parents on the day prior to the wedding, from six o’clock in the morning, half an hour past eight o’clock, near three o’clock [ten pages], eight o’clock at night, until eleven o’clock the same night and following the marriage) are the work of a powerful writer with a keen sense for the dramatic.

In the final analysis, however, the novel succeeds or fails because of its characters, particularly and inevitably that of Pamela herself. From the opening letter in which she informs her parents that her mistress has died and Squire B., her mistress’s son, has appeared on the scene, to the long sequence of her journal entries, until her final victory when her would-be seducer, worn out and defeated in all his attempts to have her without marriage, capitulates and makes the “thrice-happy” Pamela his wife, she dominates the novel.

In effect, and seemingly quite beyond Richardson’s conscious intent, Pamela is two quite different characters. On one hand, she is the attractive and convincing young girl who informs her parents that her recently deceased mistress had left her three pairs of shoes that fit her perfectly, adding that “my lady had a very little foot”; or having been transferred to Squire B.’s Lincolnshire estate, laments that she lacks “the courage to stay, neither can I think to go.” On the other hand, she is at times a rather unconvincing puppet who thinks and talks in pious platitudes and values her “honesty” as a very valuable commodity, a character—in Joseph Wood Krutch’s words—“so devoid of any delicacy of feeling as to be inevitably indecent.”

Squire B. is less interesting than Pamela, and his efforts to seduce Pamela tend to become either boring or amusing. Her father, the Old Gaffer, who would disown his daughter “were she not honest,” similarly frequently verges upon caricature, although one distinguished historian of the English novel finds him extremely convincing; and Lady Davers, Squire B.’s arrogant sister, tends to be more unbelievable than convincing, as do Pamela’s captors, the odious Mrs. Jewkes and the equally repulsive Colbrand.

In spite of its shortcomings, Pamela cannot be dismissed, as one critic has commented, as “only a record of a peculiarly loathsome aspect of bourgeois morality.” Pamela has great moments, scenes, and characters that pass the ultimate test of a work of fiction, that of memorableness: scenes that remain in the reader’s consciousness long after many of the events have become blurred or dimmed. It is equally important historically: Among other things, its popularity helped prepare the way for better novelists and better novels, including what Arnold Bennett was to call the “greatest realistic novel in the world,” Richardson’s Clarissa.

Clarissa

The novel revolves around the beautiful and virtuous Clarissa Harlowe, a young woman from a wealthy family who is pursued by the villainous Robert Lovelace. Despite her attempts to maintain her virtue and independence, she is tricked into running away with Lovelace and is subsequently held against her will. Lovelace's relentless pursuit and Clarissa's steadfast resistance culminate in her tragic end, making the novel a complex exploration of power, morality, and the vulnerability of women in society.

Clarissa, Richardson's masterpiece, was published in 1748, and later published in revised editions. It is an exceptionally long novel; excepting novel sequences, it may well be the longest novel in the English language. The full volume of its third edition, the edition most extensively revised by Richardson, spans over 1 million words. One of the most beautifully written of all epistolary novels, Clarissa is also notable for its extended ventures into philosophical and ethical questions, making it one of the most insightfully instructive works of the eighteenth century.

Unlike Pamela, Clarissa did not have its origins in “real life”; his characters, Richardson insisted, were “entirely creatures of his fantasy.” He commenced the novel in the spring or summer of 1744; it was three years in the making, two of which were primarily devoted to revision (it has been said that when his old friend Aaron Hill misread Clarissa, Richardson devoted a year to revising the text for publication). Almost a million words in length, the plot of Clarissa is relatively simple. Clarissa Harlowe, daughter of well-to-do, middle-class parents with social aspirations, is urged by her family to marry a man, Solmes, whom she finds repulsive. At the same time, her sister Arabella is being courted by an aristocrat, Robert Lovelace. Lovelace, attracted and fascinated by Clarissa, abandons his lukewarm courtship of Arabella and, after wounding the girl’s brother in a duel, turns his attention to Clarissa, in spite of her family’s objections. Clarissa lets herself be persuaded; she goes off with Lovelace, who imprisons her in a brothel, where he eventually drugs and rapes her; she finally escapes, refuses the contrite Lovelace’s offers of marriage, and eventually dies. Lovelace, repentant and haunted by his evil act, is killed in a duel by Clarissa’s cousin, Colonel Morden.

Counterpointing and contrasting with these two major characters are Anna Howe, Clarissa’s closest friend and confidante, and John Belford, Lovelace’s closest friend. Around these four are a number of contrasting minor characters, each of whom contributes to the minutely recorded series of events and climaxes, events which in their barest forms verge upon melodrama, and at times even farce. Even so, the novel in its totality is greater than the sum of its parts: It has about it the ultimate power of Greek tragedy, and Clarissa herself, like the major characters of Greek drama, rises above the occasionally melodramatic or improbable sequences to attain a stature not seen in English prose fiction before, and seldom surpassed since.

Much of the power and the drama of Clarissa grows out of the author’s effective use of contrast—between Clarissa and Anna Howe; between Lovelace and Belford; and between the country life of the upper middle class and the dark, rank side of urban England. This and the richness and variety of incident redeem the sometimes improbable events and lapses into didacticism and give the novel a sense of reality larger than life itself.

In the final analysis, the great strength of the novel is the creation of its two main characters. Clarissa, with her pride and self-reliance, “so secure in her virtue,” whose feelings of shame and self-hatred are such that she begs Lovelace “to send her to Bedlam or a private madhouse” (no less a master than Henry Fielding praised Clarissa’s letter after the rape as “beyond anything I had ever read”), could have degenerated into bathos or caricature but instead attains a level of intensity and reality unique in the novel prior to 1740.

Though Clarissa dominates the novel, Richardson is almost as successful with Lovelace, despite the fact that in the early portions of the novel he seems for the most part like Squire B., just another Restoration rake. His transformation, following his violation of Clarissa, grows and deepens: “One day, I fancy,” he reflects, “I shall hate myself on recollecting what I am about at this instant. But I must stay till then. We must all of us have something to repent of.” Repent he does, after his terse letter announcing the consummation of the rape: “And now, Belford, I can go no further. The affair is over. Clarissa lives.”

Belford, like the reader, is horror-stricken. By the rape, Lovelace has acted not as a man, but as an animal, and his expiation is, in its own way, much more terrible than that of Clarissa, who at times somewhat complacently contemplates her own innocence and eventual heavenly reward. Lovelace remains a haunted man (“sick of myself! sick of my remembrance of my vile act!”) until his death in a duel with Colonel Morden, a death which is really a kind of suicide. The final scene of the novel, and Lovelace’s last words, “Let this Expiate!,” are among the most memorable of the entire novel, and Richardson’s portrayal of a character soiled and tarnished, an eternally damaged soul, is unforgettable.

Plot summary

Clarissa Harlowe, the tragic heroine of Clarissa, is a beautiful and virtuous young lady whose family has become very wealthy only in recent years and is now eager to become part of the aristocracy by acquiring estates and titles through advantageous pairings. Clarissa's relatives attempt to force her to marry a rich but heartless man against her will and, more importantly, against her own sense of virtue. Desperate to remain free, she is tricked by a young gentleman of her acquaintance, Lovelace, into escaping with him. However, she refuses to marry him, longing—unusually for a girl in her time—to live by herself in peace. Lovelace, in the meantime, has been trying to arrange a fake marriage all along, and considers it a sport to add Clarissa to his long list of conquests. However, as he is more and more impressed by Clarissa, he finds it difficult to keep convincing himself that truly virtuous women do not exist. The continuous pressure he finds himself under, combined with his growing passion for Clarissa, forces him to extremes and eventually he rapes her. Clarissa manages to escape from him, but remains dangerously ill. When she dies, however, it is in the full consciousness of her own virtue, and trusting in a better life after death. Lovelace, tormented by what he has done but still unable to change, dies in a duel with Clarissa's cousin. Clarissa's relatives finally realize the misery they have caused, a discovery that comes too late for Clarissa.

Sir Charles Grandison

As early as February, 1741, an anonymous correspondent had asked Richardson to write the “history of a Man, whose Life would be the path that we should follow.” By the end of the decade, with Pamela and Clarissa behind him, and influenced by old friends, including Lady Bradshaigh, Richardson began thinking seriously about such a novel. Despite increasing ill health and the continuing demands of his business, he was soon immersed in the project, a novel designed to “present” the character of a “Good Man,” and to show the influence such a character exerted “on society in general and his intimates in particular.” Although he had at one time decided not to publish the novel during his lifetime, the first volumes of Sir Charles Grandison came out in 1753. Even before the seventh and last volume was in print the following year, some critics were stating their dissatisfaction with Sir Charles’s “Unbelievable Perfection,” a criticism Richardson repudiated in a concluding note to the last volume: “The Editor (that is, Richardson himself) thinks human nature has often, of late, been shown in a light too degrading; and he hopes from this series of letters it will be seen that characters may be good without being unnatural.”

Subsequent critical opinion of the novel has varied widely, a few critics considering it Richardson’s masterpiece, while many regard it as his least successful novel. Sir Charles Grandison differs dramatically from its predecessors in its concern with the English upper class and aristocracy, a world which Richardson freely acknowledged he had never known or understood: “How shall a man obscurely situated . . . pretend to describe and enter into characters in upper life?” In setting, too, the novel was a new departure, ranging as it does from England to Italy and including a large number of Italians, highlighted by Clementina, certainly the most memorable character in the novel. The conflict in Clementina’s heart and soul, her subsequent refusal to marry Sir Charles because he is a Protestant, and her ensuing madness are as effective as anything Richardson ever wrote, and far more convincing than Sir Charles’s rescue of Harriett Byron following her abduction by Sir Hargrove Pollexfen and their eventual marriage. Harriett, though not as interesting a character as either Pamela or Clarissa, shares with them one basic habit: She is an indefatigable letter writer, perhaps the most prolific in the history of English prose fiction, at times sleeping only two hours a night and, when not admiring Grandison from afar, writing letters to him (not uncharacteristic of her style is her appeal to the clergyman who is supposed to marry her to Sir Hargrove: “Worthy man . . . save a poor creature. I would not hurt a worm! I love everybody! Save me from violence!”).

Sir Charles himself is similarly less interesting than either Squire B. or Lovelace, and it is difficult today for even the most sympathetic reader to find a great deal to admire in the man who is against masquerades, dresses neatly but not gaudily, is time and time again described as a “prince of the Almighty’s creation,” an “angel of a man,” and “one of the finest dancers in England.” Most of the other characters, including the Italians (with the notable exception of Clementina), are similarly either unconvincing or uninteresting, except for two small masterpieces of characterization: Aunt Nell, Grandison’s maiden aunt; and Lord G., Charlotte Grandison’s husband, a gentle and quiet man, in love with his temperamental wife, often hurt and bewildered by her sharp tongue and brusque actions.

Horace Walpole is said to have written off Sir Charles Grandison as a “romance as it would be spiritualized by a Methodist preacher”; and Lord Chesterfield also dismissed it, adding that whenever Richardson “goes, ultra crepidem, into high life, he grossly escapes the modes.” On the other hand, Jane Austen specifically “singled . . . [it] out for special praise,” and Richardson’s major biographers believe that in Sir Charles Grandison, his “surface realism and his analysis of social situations are at their height.”

Whatever his weaknesses, Richardson was one of the seminal influences in the development of the novel. His impact upon his contemporaries and their immediate successors was profound, not only in England but on the Continent as well, and eventually on the beginnings of the novel in the United States. He popularized the novel of manners as a major genre for several decades, and his use of the epistolary method added another dimension to the art of narrative. Though his novels have frequently suffered in comparison with those of his major contemporary, Henry Fielding, in recent years a renewed interest in and appraisal of Richardson and his work have placed him securely in the ranks of the major English novelists. 

105-) English Literature

105) English Literature

Samuel Richardson 

 

First novel

Work continued to improve, and Richardson printed the Daily Journal between 1736 and 1737, and the Daily Gazetteer in 1738.   During his time printing the Daily Journal, he was also printer to the "Society for the Encouragement of Learning", a group that tried to help authors become independent from publishers, but collapsed soon after. In December 1738, Richardson's printing business was successful enough to allow him to lease a house in Fulham in London.   This house, which would be Richardson's residence from 1739 to 1754, was later named "The Grange" in 1836.   In 1739, Richardson was asked by his friends Charles Rivington and John Osborn to write "a little volume of Letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers, who were unable to indite for themselves".  While writing this volume, Richardson was inspired to write his first novel.

Richardson made the transition from master printer to novelist on 6 November 1740 with the publication of Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded. Pamela was sometimes regarded as "the first novel in English"  or the first modern novel. Richardson explained the origins of the work:

In the progress of [Rivington's and Osborn's collection], writing two or three letters to instruct handsome girls, who were obliged to go out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue, and hence sprung Pamela... Little did I think, at first, of making one, much less two volumes of it... I thought the story, if written in an easy and natural manner, suitably to the simplicity of it, might possibly introduce a new species of writing, that might possibly turn young people into a course of reading different from the pomp and parade of romance-writing, and dismissing the improbable and marvellous, with which novels generally abound, might tend to promote the cause of religion and virtue.  

After Richardson started the work on 10 November 1739, his wife and her friends became so interested in the story that he finished it on 10 January 1740.   Pamela Andrews, the heroine of Pamela, represented "Richardson's insistence upon well-defined feminine roles" and was part of a common fear held during the 18th century that women were "too bold". In particular, her "zeal for housewifery" was included as a proper role of women in society.   Although Pamela and the title heroine were popular and gave a proper model for how women should act, they inspired "a storm of anti-Pamelas" (like Henry Fielding's Shamela and Joseph Andrews and Eliza Haywood's The Anti-Pamela) because the character "perfectly played her part". 

Later that year, Richardson printed Rivington and Osborn's book which inspired Pamela under the title of Letters written to and for particular Friends, on the most important Occasions. Directing not only the requisite Style and Forms to be observed in writing Familiar Letters; but how to think and act justly and prudently, in the common Concerns of Human Life.   The book contained many anecdotes and lessons on how to live, but Richardson did not care for the work and it was never expanded even though it went into six editions during his life.   He went so far as to tell a friend, "This volume of letters is not worthy of your perusal" because they were "intended for the lower classes of people". 

Multiple sequels to Pamela were written by other writers, such as Pamela’s Conduct in High Life, which was written by John Kelly and published by Ward and Chandler in September 1741. Published that same year were two anonymous sequels: Pamela in High Life and The Life of Pamela, the latter being a third-person retelling of both Richardson's original novel and Kelly's continuation. These unofficial sequels capitalized off the character’s popularity and readers desire to learn what happened to Pamela and Mr. B after the conclusion of Richardson’s novel. This compelled Richardson to write a sequel to the novel, Pamela in her Exalted Condition, in December 1741. The novel had a poorer reception than the first, as Peter Sabor writes, “the continuation is a far blander affair than the original work,” focusing on Pamela’s gentility and married life. The public's interest in the characters was waning, and this was only furthered by Richardson's focusing on Pamela discussing morality, literature, and philosophy.  

Later career

After the failures of the Pamela sequels, Richardson began to compose a new novel.   It was not until early 1744 that the content of the plot was known, and this happened when he sent Aaron Hill two chapters to read. In particular, Richardson asked Hill if he could help shorten the chapters because Richardson was worried about the length of the novel. Hill refused, saying,

You have formed a style, as much your property as our respect for what you write is, where verbosity becomes a virtue; because, in pictures which you draw with such a skilful negligence, redundance but conveys resemblance; and to contract the strokes, would be to spoil the likeness.  

In July, Richardson sent Hill a complete "design" of the story, and asked Hill to try again, but Hill responded, "It is impossible, after the wonders you have shown in Pamela, to question your infallible success in this new, natural, attempt" and that "you must give me leave to be astonished, when you tell me that you have finished it already".  However, the novel was not complete to Richardson's satisfaction until October 1746.   Between 1744 and 1746, Richardson tried to find readers who could help him shorten the work, but his readers wanted to keep the work in its entirety.   A frustrated Richardson wrote to Edward Young in November 1747:

What contentions, what disputes have I involved myself in with my poor Clarissa through my own diffidence, and for want of a will! I wish I had never consulted anybody but Dr. Young, who so kindly vouchsafed me his ear, and sometimes his opinion.  

Richardson did not devote all of his time just to working on his new novel, but was busy printing various works for other authors that he knew.[5]: 77  In 1742, he printed the third edition of Daniel Defoe's Tour through Great Britain. He filled his few further years with smaller works for his friends until 1748, when Richardson started helping Sarah Fielding and her friend Jane Collier to write novels.   By 1748, Richardson was so impressed with Collier that he accepted her as the governess to his daughters. In 1753, she wrote An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting with the help of Sarah Fielding and possibly James Harris or Richardson,: 46  and it was Richardson who printed the work.   But Collier was not the only author to be helped by Richardson, as he printed an edition of Young's Night Thoughts in 1749.

By 1748 his novel Clarissa was published in full: two volumes appeared in November 1747, two in April 1748 , and three in December 1748.   Unlike the novel, the author was not faring well at this time.   By August 1748, Richardson was in poor health.   He had a sparse diet that consisted mostly of vegetables and drinking vast amounts of water, and was not robust enough to prevent the effects of being bled upon the advice of various doctors throughout his life.   He was known for "vague 'startings' and 'paroxysms'", along with experiencing tremors.   Richardson once wrote to a friend that "my nervous disorders will permit me to write with more impunity than to read" and that writing allowed him a "freedom he could find nowhere else".[9]: 287 

However, his condition did not stop him from continuing to release the final volumes Clarissa after November 1748.   To Hill he wrote: "The Whole will make Seven; that is, one more to attend these two. Eight crouded into Seven , by a smaller Type. Ashamed as I am of the Prolixity, I thought I owed the Public Eight Vols. in Quantity for the Price of Seven".  Richardson later made it up to the public with "deferred Restorations" of the fourth edition of the novel being printed in larger print with eight volumes and a preface that reads: "It is proper to observe with regard to the present Edition that it has been thought fit to restore many Passages, and several Letters which were omitted in the former merely for shortening-sake."  

The response to the novel was positive, and the public began to describe the title heroine as "divine Clarissa".  It was soon considered Richardson's "masterpiece", his greatest work,   and was rapidly translated into Frenchin part or in full, for instance by the abbé Antoine François Prévost, as well as into German. The Dutch translator of Clarissa was the distinguished Mennonite preacher, Johannes Stinstra (1708–1790), who as a champion of Socinianism had been suspended from the ministry in 1742. This gave him sufficient leisure to translate Clarissa, which was published in eight volumes between 1752 –1755 . However, Stinstra later wrote in a letter to Richardson of 24 December 1753 that the translation had been "a burden too heavy for [his] shoulders". In England there was particular emphasis on Richardson's "natural creativity" and his ability to incorporate daily life experience into the novel.   However, the final three volumes were delayed, and many of the readers began to "anticipate" the concluding story and some demanded that Richardson write a happy ending. One such advocate of the happy ending was Henry Fielding, who had previously written Joseph Andrews to mock Richardson's Pamela.   Although Fielding was originally opposed to Richardson, Fielding supported the original volumes of Clarissa and thought a happy ending would be "poetical justice".  Those who disagreed included the Sussex diarist Thomas Turner, writing in about July 1754: "Clarissa Harlow, I look upon as a very well-wrote thing, tho' it must be allowed it is too prolix. The author keeps up the character of every person in all places; and as to the maner  of its ending , I like it better than if it had terminated in more happy consequences."

Others wanted Lovelace to be reformed and for him and Clarissa to marry, but Richardson would not allow a "reformed rake" to be her husband, and was unwilling to change the ending.   In a postscript to Clarissa, Richardson wrote:

if the temporary sufferings of the Virtuous and the Good can be accounted for and justified on Pagan principles, many more and infinitely stronger reasons will occur to a Christian Reader in behalf of what are called unhappy Catastrophes, from a consideration of the doctrine of future rewards; which is every where strongly enforced in the History of Clarissa.

Although few were bothered by the epistolary style, Richardson feels obliged to continue his postscript with a defence of the form based on the success of it in Pamela.  

However, some did question the propriety of having Lovelace, the villain of the novel, act in such an immoral fashion.   The novel avoids glorifying Lovelace, as Carol Flynn puts it, by damning his character with monitory footnotes and authorial intrusions, Richardson was free to develop in his fiction his villain's fantasy world. Schemes of mass rape would be legitimate as long as Richardson emphasized the negative aspects of his character at the same time. But Richardson still felt the need to respond by writing a pamphlet called Answer to the Letter of a Very Reverend and Worthy Gentleman.   In the pamphlet, he defends his characterizations and explains that he took great pains to avoid any glorification of scandalous behaviour, unlike the authors of many other novels that rely on characters of such low quality.  

In 1749, Richardson's female friends started asking him to create a male figure as virtuous as his heroines "Pamela" and "Clarissa" in order to "give the world his idea of a good man and fine gentleman combined".  Although he did not at first agree, he eventually complied, starting work on a book in this vein in June 1750.   Near the end of 1751, Richardson sent a draft of the novel The History of Sir Charles Grandison to Mrs. Donnellan, and the novel was being finalized in the middle of 1752.   When the novel was being printed in 1753, Richardson discovered that Irish printers were trying to pirate the work.   He immediately fired those he suspected of giving the printers advanced copies of Grandison and relied on multiple London printing firms to help him produce an authentic edition before the pirated version was sold.   The first four volumes were published on 13 November 1753, and in December the next two would follow.   The remaining volume was published in March to complete a seven-volume series while a six-volume set was simultaneously published, and these met with success.   In Grandison, Richardson was unwilling to risk having a negative response to any "rakish" characteristics that Lovelace embodied, and denigrated the immoral characters "to show those mischievous young admirers of Lovelace once and for all that the rake should be avoided".

Death

In his final years, Richardson received visits from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker, other important political figures, and many London writers. By that time, he enjoyed a high social position and was Master of the Stationers' Company. In early November 1754, Richardson and his family moved from the Grange to a home at Parsons Green, now in west London.   During this time Richardson received a letter from Samuel Johnson asking for money to pay a debt that Johnson was unable to afford.   On 16 March 1756, Richardson responded with more than enough money and their friendship was certain by this time.  

At the same time as he was associating with important figures of the day, Richardson's career as a novelist drew to a close. Grandison was his final novel, and he stopped writing fiction afterwards.   It was Grandison that set the tone for Richardson's followers after his death. However, he was continually prompted by various friends and admirers to continue to write along with suggested topics.   Richardson did not like any of the topics, and chose to spend all of his time composing letters to his friends and associates.   The only major work that Richardson would write would be A Collection of the Moral and Instruction Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflexions, contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison.   Although it is possible that this work was inspired by Johnson asking for an "index rerum" for Richardson's novels , the Collection contains more of a focus on "moral and instructive" lessons than the index that Johnson sought.

After June 1758, Richardson began to suffer from insomnia, and in June 1761, he was afflicted with apoplexy.   This moment was described by his friend, Miss Talbot, on 2 July 1761:

Poor Mr. Richardson was seized on Sunday evening with a most severe paralytic stroke.... It sits pleasantly upon my mind, that the last morning we spent together was particularly friendly, and quiet, and comfortable. It was 28 May – he looked then so well! One has long apprehended some stroke of this kind; the disease made its gradual approaches by that heaviness which clouded the cheerfulness of his conversation, that used to be so lively and so instructive; by the increased tremblings which unfitted that hand so peculiarly formed to guide the pen; and by, perhaps, the querulousness of temper, most certainly not natural to so sweet and so enlarged a mind, which you and I have lately lamented, as making his family at times not so comfortable as his principles, his study, and his delight to diffuse happiness, wherever he could, would otherwise have done 

Two days later, aged 71, on 4 July 1761, Richardson died at Parsons Green and was buried at St. Bride's Church in Fleet Street near his first wife Martha.  

During Richardson's life, his printing press produced about 10,000 pieces, including novels, historical texts, Acts of Parliament, and newspapers, making his print house one of the most productive and diverse in the 18th century. He wanted to keep the press in his family, but after the death of his four sons and a nephew, his printing press would be left in his will to his only surviving male heir, a second nephew.   This happened to be a nephew whom Richardson did not trust, doubting his abilities as a printer.   Richardson's fears proved well-founded, for after his death the press stopped producing quality works and eventually stopped printing altogether.   Richardson owned copyrights to most of his works, and these were sold after his death,   in twenty-fourth share issues, with shares in Clarissa bringing in 25 pounds each and those for Grandison bringing in 20 pounds each. Shares in Pamela, sold in sixteenths, went for 18 pounds each.  

104-) English Literature

104-) English Literature 

Samuel Richardson Summary

Samuel Richardson, (baptized Aug. 19, 1689, Mackworth, near Derby, Derbyshire, Eng.—died July 4, 1761, Parson’s Green, near London), English novelist. After moving with his family to London at age 10, Richardson was apprenticed to a printer before setting up in business for himself in 1721. He soon became quite prosperous. In the 1730s he began to edit and write pamphlets, and he eventually hit on the idea of writing a book using a series of letters on the same subject. His major novels were the epistolary novel Pamela (1740), about a servant who avoids seduction and is rewarded by marriage; and his huge masterpiece, Clarissa, 7 vol. (1747–48), a tragedy with multiple narrators that develops a profoundly suggestive interplay of opposed voices. The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753–54), which blends moral discussion and a comic ending, influenced later writers, especially Jane Austen.

Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson (baptized Aug. 19, 1689, Mackworth, near Derby, Derbyshire, Eng.—died July 4, 1761, Parson’s Green, near London), was an English writer and printer known for three epistolary novels: Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). Samuel Richardson, expanded the dramatic possibilities of the novel by his invention and use of the letter form (“epistolary novel”). He printed almost 500 works, including journals and magazines, working periodically with the London bookseller Andrew Millar. Richardson had been apprenticed to a printer, whose daughter he eventually married. He lost her along with their six children, but remarried and had six more children, of whom four daughters reached adulthood, leaving no male heirs to continue the print shop. As it ran down, he wrote his first novel at the age of 51 and joined the admired writers of his day. Leading acquaintances included Samuel Johnson and Sarah Fielding, the physician and Behmenist George Cheyne, and the theologian and writer William Law, whose books he printed. At Law's request, Richardson printed some poems by John Byrom. In literature, he rivalled Henry Fielding; the two responded to each other's literary styles.

Biography

Richardson, one of nine children, was probably born in 1689 in Mackworth, Derbyshire, to Samuel and Elizabeth Richardson. It is unsure where in Derbyshire he was born because Richardson always concealed the location, but it has recently been discovered that Richardson probably lived in poverty as a child.

His ancestors were of yeoman stock. His father, also Samuel, and his mother’s father, Stephen Hall, became London tradesmen, and his father, after the death of his first wife, married Stephen’s daughter, Elizabeth, in 1682. A temporary move of the Richardsons to Derbyshire accounts for the fact that the novelist was born in Mackworth. They returned to London when Richardson was 10. He had at best what he called “only Common School-Learning.” The perceived inadequacy of his education was later to preoccupy him and some of his critics.

Richardson was bound apprentice to a London printer, John Wilde. Sometime after completing his apprenticeship he became associated with the Leakes, a printing family whose presses he eventually took over when he set up in business for himself in 1721 and married Martha Wilde, the daughter of his master. Elizabeth Leake, the sister of a prosperous bookseller of Bath, became his second wife in 1733, two years after Martha’s death. His domestic life was marked by tragedy. All six of the children from his first marriage died in infancy or childhood. By his second wife he had four daughters who survived him, but two other children died in infancy. These and other bereavements contributed to the nervous ailments of his later life.

 The older Richardson was, according to the younger: a very honest man, descended of a family of middling note, in the country of Surrey, but which having for several generations a large number of children, the not large possessions were split and divided, so that he and his brothers were put to trades; and the sisters were married to tradesmen.His mother, according to Richardson, "was also a good woman, of a family not ungenteel; but whose father and mother died in her infancy, within half-an-hour of each other, in the London pestilence of 1665".

The trade his father pursued was that of a joiner (a type of carpenter, but Richardson explains that it was "then more distinct from that of a carpenter than now it is with us").: 1  In describing his father's occupation, Richardson stated that "he was a good draughtsman and understood architecture", and it was suggested by Samuel Richardson's son-in-law that the senior Richardson was a cabinetmaker and an exporter of mahogany while working at Aldersgate-street.: 1  The abilities and position of his father brought him to the attention of James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth.: 2  However, as Richardson claims, this was to Richardson senior's "great detriment" because of the failure of the Monmouth Rebellion, which ended in the death of Scott in 1685. After Scott's death, the elder Richardson was forced to abandon his business in London and live a modest life in Derbyshire.

Early life

The Richardsons were not exiled forever from London; they eventually returned, and the young Richardson was educated at Christ's Hospital grammar school. The extent that he was educated at the school is uncertain, and Leigh Hunt wrote years later:

It is a fact not generally known that Richardson... received what education he had (which was very little, and did not go beyond English) at Christ's Hospital. It may be wondered how he could come no better taught from a school which had sent forth so many good scholars; but in his time, and indeed till very lately, that foundation was divided into several schools, none of which partook of the lessons of the others; and Richardson, agreeably to his father's intention of bringing him up to trade, was most probably confined to the writing school, where all that was taught was writing and arithmetic.[6]

However, this conflicts with Richardson's nephew's account that "'it is certain that [Richardson] was never sent to a more respectable seminary' than 'a private grammar school' located in Derbyshire". 

Little is known of Richardson's early years beyond the few things that Richardson was willing to share.   Although he was not forthcoming with specific events and incidents, he did talk about the origins of his writing ability; Richardson would tell stories to his friends and spent his youth constantly writing letters.   One such letter, written when Richardson was almost 11, was directed to a woman in her 50s who was in the habit of constantly criticizing others. "Assuming the style and address of a person in years", Richardson cautioned her about her actions.   However, his handwriting was used to determine that it was his work, and the woman complained to his mother. The result was, as he explains, that "my mother chid me for the freedom taken by such a boy with a woman of her years" but also "commended my principles, though she censured the liberty taken".

After his writing ability was known, he began to help others in the community write letters.   In particular, Richardson, at the age of 13, helped many of the girls that he associated with to write responses to various love letters they received.   As Richardson claims, "I have been directed to chide, and even repulse, when an offence was either taken or given, at the very time that the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem and affect".  Although this helped his writing ability, he in 1753 advised the Dutch minister Stinstra not to draw large conclusions from these early actions:

You think, Sir, you can account from my early secretaryship to young women in my father's neighbourhood, for the characters I have drawn of the heroines of my three works. But this opportunity did little more for me, at so tender an age, than point, as I may say, or lead my enquiries, as I grew up, into the knowledge of female heart.  He continued to explain that he did not fully understand females until writing Clarissa, and these letters were only a beginning.

Early career

The elder Richardson originally wanted his son to become a clergyman, but he was not able to afford the education that the younger Richardson would require, so he let his son pick his own profession.   He selected the profession of printing because he hoped to "gratify a thirst for reading, which, in after years, he disclaimed". At the age of 17, in 1706, Richardson was bound in seven-year apprenticeship under John Wilde as a printer. Wilde's printing shop was in Golden Lion Court on Aldersgate Street, and Wilde had a reputation as "a master who grudged every hour... that tended not to his profit". 

In his professional life Richardson was hardworking and successful. With the growth in prominence of his press went his steady increase in prestige as a member, an officer, and later master, of the Stationers’ Company (the guild for those in the book trade). During the 1730s his press became known as one of the three best in London, and with prosperity he moved to a more spacious London house and leased the first of three country houses in which he entertained a circle of friends that included Dr. Johnson, the painter William Hogarth, the actors Colley Cibber and David Garrick, Edward Young, and Arthur Onslow, speaker of the House of Commons, whose influence in 1733 helped to secure for Richardson lucrative contracts for government printing that later included the journals of the House.

In this same decade he began writing in a modest way. At some point, he was commissioned to write a collection of letters that might serve as models for “country readers,” a volume that has become known as Familiar Letters on Important Occasions. Occasionally he hit upon continuing the same subject from one letter to another, and, after a letter from “a father to a daughter in service, on hearing of her master’s attempting her virtue,” he supplied the daughter’s answer. This was the germ of his novel Pamela. With a method supplied by the letter writer and a plot by a story that he remembered of an actual serving maid who preserved her virtue and was, ostensibly, rewarded by marriage, he began writing the work in November 1739 and published it as Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded a year later.

Most of the story is told by the heroine herself. On the death of Pamela’s mistress, her son, Mr. B, begins a series of stratagems designed to end in Pamela’s seduction. These failing, he abducts her and then uses an elaborate ruse that results in a threatened, if not attempted, rape. Pamela faints, and, when she recovers, Mr. B claims “that he had not offer’d the least Indecency”; he soon afterward offers marriage. In the second half of the novel Richardson shows Pamela winning over those who had disapproved of the misalliance. Though Pamela was immensely popular, Richardson was criticized by those who thought his heroine a calculating social climber or his own morality dubious. Pamela is, ultimately, a 15-year-old servant who, by Richardson’s telling, faces a dilemma because she wants to preserve her virtue without losing the man with whom she herself has fallen in love (and whose family employs her). More obliquely, because he wrote the novel from Pamela’s point of view, Richardson also seems to suggest that Mr. B is struggling with having fallen in love with a servant, who, traditionally, would have been merely a target for seduction or sexual violence. (In a clever twist, he is converted by her letters, which he has been intercepting and reading.) The author resolved the conflicts of both characters too facilely, perhaps, because he was firmly committed to the plot of the true story he had remembered. When the instantaneous popularity of Pamela led to a spurious continuation of her story, he wrote his own sequel, Pamela in her Exalted Condition (1742), a two-volume work that did little to enhance his reputation.

By 1744 Richardson seems to have completed a first draft of his second novel, Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady, but he spent three years trying to bring it within the compass of the seven volumes in which it was published. He first presents the heroine, Clarissa Harlowe, when she is discovering the barely masked motives of her family, who would force her into a loveless marriage to improve their fortunes. Outside the orbit of the Harlowes stands Lovelace, nephew of Lord M and a romantic who held the code of the Harlowes in contempt. In her desperate straits, Clarissa appraises too highly the qualities that set Lovelace beyond the world of her family, and, when he offers protection, she runs off with him. She is physically attracted by if not actually in love with Lovelace and is responsive to the wider horizons of his world, but she is to discover that he wants her only on his own terms. In Lovelace’s letters to his friend Belford, Richardson shows that what is driving him to conquest and finally to rape is really her superiority. In the correspondence of Clarissa and her friend Anna Howe, Richardson shows the distance that separates her from her confidant, who thinks her quixotic in not accepting a marriage; but marriage as a way out would have been a sacrifice to that same consciousness of human dignity that had led her to defy her family. As the novel comes to its long-drawn-out close, she is removed from the world of both the Harlowes and the Lovelaces, and dies, a child of heaven. In providing confidants for his central characters and in refusing to find a place in the social structure into which to fit his sorely beset heroine, Richardson made his greatest advances over Pamela. He was determined, as his postscript indicates, to write a novel that was also a tragedy.

Richardson’s third novel was his bow to requests for the hero as a good man, a counter-attraction to the errant hero of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749). Fielding had been among those who thought Pamela a scheming social climber, as he had shown in his parody An Apology for the life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (1741). In spite of Fielding’s critical praise of Clarissa and the friendship that later developed between Richardson and Fielding’s sister, Sarah, Richardson never forgave the author of what he stigmatized as “that vile Pamphlet Shamela.” In The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753–54), he provides a hero who is a model of benevolence. He faces little that a good heart cannot remedy and extricates himself from the nearest thing to a dilemma that he has to encounter: a “divided love” between an English woman, Harriet Byron, and an Italian, Signora Clementina. He is saved for Harriet by the last-minute refusal of the Roman Catholic Clementina to marry a firmly committed English churchman. The uneasy minds of Clementina and Harriet are explored with some penetration, but Sir Charles faces nothing in his society or within himself that requires much of a struggle. Furthermore, his dilemma is not so central to the novel as were those of Pamela and Clarissa. He is surrounded with a large cast of characters who have their parts to play in social comedy that anticipates the novel of manners of the late 18th century.

Richardson was an indefatigable reviser of his own work, and the various editions of his novels differ greatly. Much of his revision was undertaken in anxious, self-censoring response to criticism; the earliest versions of his novels are generally the freshest and most daring.

Richardson’s Pamela is often credited with being the first English novel. Although the validity of this claim depends on the definition of the term novel, it is not disputed that Richardson was innovative in his concentration on a single action. By telling the story in the form of letters, he provided if not the “stream” at least the flow of consciousness of his characters, and he pioneered in showing how his characters’ sense of class differences and their awareness of the conflict between sexual instincts and the moral code created dilemmas that could not always be resolved. These characteristics reappear regularly in the subsequent history of the novel. Above all, Richardson was the writer who made the novel a respectable genre.

Richardson had disciples when he died. Some of them show the influence of Clarissa, which seems to have been most responsible for the cult of Richardson that arose on the European continent. It was Grandison, however, that set the tone of most of Richardson’s English followers and for Jane Austen, who was said to have remembered “every circumstance” in this novel, everything “that was ever said or done.” By the end of the 18th century, Richardson’s reputation was on the wane both in England and abroad. However, it was reborn in the late 20th century, when Clarissa was rediscovered as one of the great psychological novels of European literature.

While working for Wilde, he met a rich gentleman who took an interest in Richardson's writing abilities and the two began to correspond with each other. When the gentleman died a few years later, Richardson lost a potential patron, which delayed his ability to pursue his own writing career. He decided to devote himself completely to his apprenticeship, and he worked his way up to a position as a compositor and a corrector of the shop's printing press. In 1713, Richardson left Wilde to become "Overseer and Corrector of a Printing-Office".  This meant that Richardson ran his own shop, but the location of that shop is unknown.   It is possible that the shop was located in Staining Lane or may have been jointly run with John Leake in Jewin Street.  

In 1719, Richardson was able to take his freedom from being an apprentice and was soon able to afford to set up his own printing shop, which he did after he moved near the Salisbury Court district close to Fleet Street.   Although he claimed to business associates that he was working out of the well-known Salisbury Court, his printing shop was more accurately located on the corner of Blue Ball Court and Dorset Street in a house that later became Bell's Building.   On 23 November 1721, Richardson married Martha Wilde, the daughter of his former employer. The match was "prompted mainly by prudential considerations", although Richardson would claim later that there was a strong love-affair between Martha and him.   He soon brought her to live with him in the printing shop that served also as his home.  

A key moment in Richardson's career came on 6 August 1722 when he took on his first apprentices: Thomas Gover, George Mitchell, and Joseph Chrichley.   He would later take on William Price (2 May 1727), Samuel Jolley (5 September 1727), Bethell Wellington (2 September 1729), and Halhed Garland (5 May 1730).  

One of Richardson's first major printing contracts came in June 1723 when he began to print the bi-weekly The True Briton for Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton. This was a Jacobite political paper which attacked the government and was soon censored for printing "common libels". However, Richardson's name was not on the publication, and he was able to escape any of the negative fallout, although it is possible that Richardson participated in the papers as far as actually writing one himself.   The only lasting effect from the paper would be the incorporation of Wharton's libertine characteristics in the character of Lovelace in Richardson's Clarissa, although Wharton would be only one of many models of libertine behaviour that Richardson would find in his life.   In 1724, Richardson befriended Thomas Gent, Henry Woodfall, and Arthur Onslow, the latter of those would become the Speaker of the House of Commons.  

Over their ten years of marriage, the Richardsons had five sons and one daughter – three of the boys were successively named Samuel after their father, but all three died young. Soon after the death of William, their fourth child, Martha died on 25 January 1731. Their youngest son, Samuel, was to live past his mother for a year longer, but succumbed to illness in 1732. After his final son died, Richardson attempted to move on with his life. He married Elizabeth Leake, whose father was a printer, and the two moved into another house on Blue Ball Court. However, Elizabeth and his daughter were not the only ones living with him because Richardson allowed five of his apprentices to lodge in his home.   Elizabeth had six children (five daughters and one son) with Richardson; four of their daughters, Mary, Martha, Anne, and Sarah, reached adulthood and survived their father. Their son, another Samuel, was born in 1739 and died in 1740.  

In 1733, Richardson was granted a contract with the House of Commons, with help from Onslow, to print the Journals of the House.   The 26 volumes of the work soon improved his business.   Later in 1733, he wrote The Apprentice's Vade Mecum, urging young men like himself to be diligent and self-denying.   The work was intended to "create the perfect apprentice". Written in response to the "epidemick Evils of the present Age", the text is best known for its condemnation of popular forms of entertainment including theatres, taverns and gambling.   The manual targets the apprentice as the focal point for the moral improvement of society, not because he is most susceptible to vice, but because, Richardson suggests, he is more responsive to moral improvement than his social betters.[9]: 8  During this time, Richardson took on five more apprentices: Thomas Verren (1 August 1732), Richard Smith (6 February 1733), Matthew Stimson (7 August 1733), Bethell Wellington (7 May 1734), and Daniel Green (1 October 1734).   His total staff during the 1730s numbered seven, as his first three apprentices were free by 1728, and two of his apprentices, Verren and Smith, died soon into their apprenticeship.   The loss of Verren was particularly devastating to Richardson because Verren was his nephew and his hope for a male heir that would take over the press.