RICHARDSON, Samuel, English novel ist: b. Derbyshire, 1689; d. Parson's Green, near London, 4 July 1761. Up to the age of 50 the life of Richardson was not only un eventful, but undistinguished. The son of a joiner of the better class, who had moved from London owing to circumstances vaguely con nected with Monmouth's rebellion, there is no clear evidence that he ever had more than what he calls eeommon school learning.* His father's means did not permit him to take orders, but as a concession to an early taste for reading, he was, when the family returned to the metropolis, apprenticed to John Wilde, an Aldersgate street printer. Here he exhibited the usual traits of the exemplary apprentice; proceeded, in due course, compositor, corrector, overseer, and master; and, as in duty bound, eventually married his employer's daughter. From Fleet street, where he first began business, he moved to Salisbury Court (now square); set up newspapers and books; worked on the publications of the Society for the Encourage ment of Learning; and advanced generally in an industrious career. His first wife dying in 1731, he married again, his second wife being the sister of James Leake, a Bath bookseller. Children were born to him by both his wives; but he was well past middle life before he had acquired any literary reputation, although he had long been known to his friends as what Goldsmith calls as dab at an index.* a clever compiler of opportune prefaces and ((honest dedications,* and, above all, a copious and in defatigable letter-writer.
This, from his childhood, had been his hobby. Aa a boy he was the chartered were tary of all the love-sick girls in the neighbor hood; as a printer's apprentice he had cor responded voluminously with a gentleman who was a 'master of the epistolary style; and it is characteristic of the qualities he afterward developed as a novelist, that his communica tions were always of the moral or improving order. Out of these Things arose his first liter ary effort. Two bookseller friends, Rivington and Osborn, suggested to him the preparation of a model letter-writer. Richardson at once went farther by proposing that the letters should teach those concerned to think as well as write. Such was the origin of the little-known volume of 'Familiar Letters> issued in January 1741. Before it was finished, one of the model epis tles, 'coupled with the recollection of some thing he had heard some 20 years before, led him to the composition of a story, also in letters, dealing with the triumphs of chastity in humble life. The idea rapidly grew into the famous 'Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded' (1740), which not only obtained an immediate and un exampled success, but by superadditur to the patient realism of Defoe a power of minute mental analysis which Defoe did not possess, set a new fashion in fiction. It is this latter quality, together with the transfer of the fable from the impossible land of heroic romance to the very probable region of ordinary life, which gives the Salisbury Court printer his claim to have invented the novel of sentimental analysts as opposed to the novel of manners. Despite the moral professions of 'Pamela> many of its scenes are needlessly indelicate; and the final union of the heroine to the man who has re peatedly attempted her ruin is unpleasant,—to say nothing of the fact that there is a sordid air of calculation about the virtue she so vig ilantly preserves. But dealing, as the story did,
with real people in a real way, in what was, moreover, a dead season of letters, the book's success is not surprising. Fine ladies raved about it in public places. Clergymen praised it from the pulpit. Pope, sincerely or insincerely, declared it 'would do more good than many volumes of sermons,' and the voices of the con tinuer and parodist were speedily heard in the land.
Of the inevitable sequel, 'Pamela's Conduct in High Life,' by John Kelly of the Universal Spectator, nothing need be said, save that it forced Richardson upon a continuation of his own, now deservedly neglected. But among the numerous publications prompted. by 'Pame la's> mom assailable side, two in particular re quire to be mentioned. One was 'An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews,' a clever but very gross attack upon the inner morality of the heroine. Richardson himself attributed this to Fielding, as did other of his contemporaries; but Fielding is never known to have acknowledged it. Ten months later Fielding issued 'Joseph Andrews,> which at all events set out with the open intention of burlesquing Richardson, although its writer promptly abandoned this inadequate motive with the development of more important char acters than Pamela Booby, a name which, both in and 'Joseph Andrews,' is cruelly filled in from Richardson's hero, 'Mr. Either of these performances was sufficient to be a thorn in the side of 'Pamela's> sensitive au thor. But probably the worst thorn of all was the success of Fielding's 'Tom Jones,> which appeared not long after Richardson's next novel 'Clarissa.> 'Clarissa; or the History of a Young Lady,> usually misnamed 'Clarissa Harlowe,? was pub lished in 1747-48, in seven volumes and three instalments. The story, which deals with the 'Distresses that may attend the Misconduct both of Parents and Children in Relation to Marriage," is an intensely tragic one. The heroine, a very pure and beautiful woman, is deliberately hunted down by a relentless se ducer,. whose eventual death at the hand of her guardian only faintly satisfies poetical justice. But in this book Richardson rises to the height of his powers. Encumbered by a story to be told in letters, and trammeled with his own prolixity, he nevertheless contrives to hold his readers fascinated, not only with the fortunes of his heroine but with the individuality of her despicable but dazzling pursuer, who is drawn with surpassing dexterity. The inter mittent mode of publication added flame to the public interest in the issue; and the writer was bombarded with appeals for a "happy ending." As to this, he showed more artistic fortitude than might have been expected. Imperfect as his education had been, he had learned from the Spectator that to 'make virtue and in nocence happy and successful" was to defeat one of the great ends of tragedy, 'the raising of commiseration and terror in the minds of the audience' So Clarissa Harlowe dies elabo rately of a broken heart; and her history re mains a masterpiece.