technique, the device demands an annoying degree of almost priggish self-righteousness on the part of the heroine. Further, the morality of the “lesson” taught is not above suspicion. Pamela defends her virtue valiantly, but not without an eye to the main chance, and in the end is rewarded handsomely by an offer of marriage from her master and would-be seducer.

Henry Fielding, Richardson’s contemporary, disliked Pamela, partly because he believed that people should comport themselves in a virtuous manner simply because that is the way people should behave—not merely to acquire a financial reward. Fielding consequently responded to Richardson’s novel with two works of his own—Shamela (1741) and Joseph Andrews (1742). The former work in particular parodies Richardson’s successful novel, portraying the heroine as a conniving woman (rather than Richardson’s exemplary female). The name “Shamela” manifests the suspicion some critics experience when discussing Pamela, a woman who desires to flee when she knows her master wants to deflower her but remains under his roof to sew his coat, who entices Mr. B. by disguising herself in the clothing of a farmer’s daughter, and who finally marries this wealthy man who has abused her and shown her no respect throughout the novel.

Richardson’s next novel, Clarissa: Or, The History of a Young Lady, avoids both these weaknesses. The story, which tells of the “Distresses that may attend the Misconduct both of Parents and Children in Relation to Marriage,” is a truly tragic one. Not only is the characterization in this novel superbly handled and always believable, but also the central dilemma is more genuinely a moral one than in Pamela; the problem is not whether Clarissa will be seduced, but whether she can forgive her seducer. This heroine is no pale, self-righteous prude. Clarissa disobeys her father by corresponding surreptitiously with Lovelace. She also lusts for the rake and runs away with him. Indeed, in this novel Richardson rises to the zenith of his powers as a novelist, both in his ability to present moving and convincing situations and in his power to describe minutely human emotions at times of extreme stress.

Richardson’s last novel, Sir Charles Grandison, attempts to depict a model good man and fine gentleman combined. Like the others, it is in epistolary form; although the characterization and analysis of emotions are still excellent, it lacks the intense central dilemma that holds the attention in the first two books and tends to make tedious reading.

After Sir Charles Grandison Richardson wrote little more of any importance. He continued to prosper in business, grew rich, was elected master of the Stationers’ Company, was employed to print the journals of the House of Commons, and was eventually appointed law printer to the king. He died in Parson’s Green, London, in 1761.

Colorless as Richardson was personally, and pedestrian and prolix as his style often became, his importance in the history of the novel should not be underestimated. His books have an extraordinary power which at first attracts and in time holds the reader. Although English fiction that came after him followed slightly different lines, it is impossible to deny Richardson the credit for inaugurating the novel of sensibility, which for a time became the fashion even more on the Continent than in England.

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 treatises to individuals suggesting a correct course of moral behavior; these were the result of his acting as a counselor to many of his female friends. Although other written works at this time had essentially functioned as moral guidebooks, Pamela represents one of the first occurrences of a written work to incorporate an identifiable, individual fictional character in an accessible plot of struggle and triumph. The accessibility of the work by its readers was due to the plot, centering around the then-common situation of a girl in the service of a licentious master. The literary transition during this time from a general moral guidebook to a specific individual's life struggles was so great that Richardson's work was considered to be "novel," a term applied to the new class of literature developed during the mid- and late-1700s, and that continues today.

Richardson's second work, Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady, is told in the same letter format as Pamela. However, unlike its predecessor, virtue does not triumph; the heroine is seduced and dies. This tragedy, published in 1748, is considered to be Richardson's greatest work.

His last work, describing the proper conduct of the ideal gentleman, was the History of Sir Charles Grandison, published in 1753.

Richardson died in London in 1761. His works can be considered the genesis of what would today be labeled romance novels, but his "new form," or "novel" format of conveying morals through a series of epistles, was imitated by a number of successive writers, including Jane Austen, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Denis Diderot.