Novel
Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded
Samuel Richardson · 1740
Opening lines
DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,
I have great trouble, and some comfort, to acquaint you with.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Pamela Andrews, fifteen, is in service with a lady in the English countryside. On her mistress's death, the son, who inherits the estate, pursues her: gifts, flattery, then more pressing advances. She tells her parents everything in letters that the messenger secretly hands to the master. Believing at last that she is going home, she gets into a carriage; the coachman takes her to another of the master's estates, in Lincolnshire, under the guard of a housekeeper in his pay.
Context
Two booksellers had commissioned from its author, then a fifty-year-old printer, a collection of model letters for people of little education. One of the situations planned, that of a girl in service exposed to the advances of her master, gave him the idea of a novel, which appeared on 6 November 1740. It appeared without the author's name, he presenting himself as the editor of an authentic correspondence, and was an immediate European success: sequels, pirated editions, translations, engravings. The parody that followed appeared under a pseudonym, and it is attributed to Henry Fielding.
Who it is for
Nearly five hundred pages of letters and journal, translated into French, in which a young girl tells day by day what happens to her.
Prizes and reception
Six editions in eighteen months, and a sequel written by the author to regain control of the heroine after an apocryphal sequel.
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