Pamela

by Samuel Richardson

Pamela: Biography


Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was born in Derbyshire, England, and after initially considering a career as a clergyman, he became apprenticed to a printer in 1706 and flourished in the trade for many years. Because Richardson had written and published his own correspondence with some success, two bookselling friends persuaded him to publish a series of letters that became the basis for the novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, in 1740. Although fictional, the story was based on events Richardson had known about in his youth. Throughout his printing career, Richardson had written...

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