First novel
Work continued to improve, and Richardson printed the Daily Journal between 1736 and 1737, and the Daily Gazetteer in 1738.[22] 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.[22] In December 1738, Richardson's printing business was successful enough to allow him to lease a house in Fulham.[21] This house, which would be Richardson's residence from 1739 to 1754, was later named "The Grange" in 1836.[27] 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".[28] While writing this volume, Richardson was inspired to write his first novel.[29]
Richardson transitioned from a master printer in Salisbury Court to novelist on 6 November 1740 with the publication of Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded .[30] Pamela was sometimes regarded as "the first English novel".[30] Richardson explained the origins of the work when he said:
"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."[31]
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.[32] 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".[33] In particular, her "zeal for housewifery" was included as a proper role of women in society.[34] 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 ) because the character "perfectly played her part".[35]
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.[29] 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.[36] 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".[36]
In September 1741, a sequel of Pamela called Pamela's Conduct in High Life was published by Ward and Chandler.[37] Although the work lacks the literary merits of the original, Richardson was compelled to publish two more volumes in December 1741 to tell of further exploits of Pamela, the title heroine, while "in her Exalted Condition".[38] 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.[38]
[edit ] Later career
After the failures of the Pamela sequels, Richardson began to compose a new novel.[39] 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.[39] In particular, Richardson asked Hill if he could help shorten the chapters because Richardson was worried about the length of the novel.[39] 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."[40]
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".[41] However, the novel wasn't complete to Richardson's satisfaction until October 1746.[41] 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.[41] 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."[42]
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.[43] In 1742, he printed the third edition of Daniel Defoe 's Tour through Great Britain. He filled his new few years with smaller works for his friends until 1748, when Richardson started helping Sarah Fielding and her friend, Jane Collier to write novels.[44] [45] By 1748, Richardson was so impressed with Collier that he accepted her as the governess to his daughters.[46] In 1753, she wrote An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting with the help of Sarah Fielding and possibly James Harris or Samuel Richardson[47] , and it was Richardson who printed the work.[48] But Collier was not the only author to be helped by Richardson, as he printed an edition of Young's Night Thoughts in 1749.[43]
His novel, Clarissa, was finally printed in its seven volumes by 1748: two volumes in November 1747, two in April 1748, and three in December 1748.[49] Unlike the novel, the author was not doing as well as the work.[50] By August 1748, Richardson was in poor health.[51] He had a sparse vegetarian diet that consisted mostly of vegetables and drinking vasts amount of water, and he was not robust enough to prevent the effects of being bled upon the advice of various doctors throughout his life.[51] He was known for "vague 'startings' and 'paroxysms'", along with experiencing tremors.[50] 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".[52]
However, his condition did not stop him from continuing to release the final volumes Clarissa after November 1748.[49] 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"[49] 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."[49]
The response to the novel was positive, and the public began to describe the title heroine as "divine Clarissa".[53] It was soon considered Richardson's "masterpiece" and his greatest work.[54] There was particular emphasis on Richardson's "natural creativity" and his ability to incorporate daily life experience into the novel.[55] 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.[56] One such advocate of the happy ending was Henry Fielding, who previous wrote Joseph Andrews to mock Richardson's Pamela.[57] Although Fielding was originally opposed to Richardson, Fielding supported the original volumes of Clarissa and thought a happy ending would be "poetical justice".[57]
Others wanted Lovelace to be reformed and for Clarissa and he to become married, but Richardson would not allow a "reformed rake" to be her husband, and was unwilling to change the ending.[58] 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."[59]
Although few were bothered by the epistolary style, Richardson feels obligated to continue his postscript with a defense of the form based on the success of it in Pamela.[59]
However, some did question the propriety of having Lovelace, the villain of the novel, act in such an immoral fashion.[60] The novel avoids glorifying Lovelace, as Carol Flyn 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."[61]
But Richardson still felt the need to respond by writing a pamphlet called Answer to the Letter of a Very Reverend and Worthy Gentleman.[60] In the pamphlet defends his characterizations and explains that he took great pains to avoid any glorification of scandalous behaviour unlike many others that rely on characters of such low quality.[60]
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".[62] Although he did not at first agree, he was pressured to this end in June 1750 and he complied.[63] 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.[64] When the novel was being printed in 1753, Richardson discovered that Irish printers were trying to pirate the work.[65] He immediately fired those he suspected as 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.[65] The first four volumes were published on 13 November 1753, and in December the next two would follow.[66] The remaining volume was published in March to complete a seven volume series while a six volume set was simultaneously published, and these were met with success.[67] In Grandison, Richardson was unwilling to risk having a negative response to any "rakish" characteristics that Lovelace embodied and degraded any of his immoral characters "to show those mischievous young admirers of Lovelace once and for all that the rake should be avoided".[68]