Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson was an eighteenth-century English novelist who pioneered the epistolary form—novels told entirely through letters.
His works *Pamela* (1740) and *Clarissa* (1748) explored female virtue, class, and morality with psychological depth unprecedented in English fiction.
Richardson's influence on the novel as a form was immense, though modern readers often find his pace slow and his moralizing heavy.
- ClarissaName meaning clear
- PamelaFemale given name
- chastityAbstaining from sexual activity
- first-person perspectiveViewpoint using "I" or "we"
- virtueMoral goodness or merit
Lovelace · morality · rake · printer · character study · social class · power dynamics · narrative voice · subjective experience · moral instruction · letters · social stratification · correspondence · seduction · epistolary · innocence · conscience · propriety
- literaturebooks, book, fiction, poetry, stories
- British AuthorsCharles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, Roald Dahl
- 1700s WritersAlexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, Daniel Defoe, Ann Radcliffe
- British novel historyVictorian novels, Edwardian era, modernist literature, romanticism, realism
- early literatureessay, novel, pamphlet, early novels, treatise
- Epistolary Authors
Samuel RichardsonTom Jones
Daniel Defoe · adventure narrative · satirical fiction · Jonathan Swift · Voltaire
Samuel RichardsonMarquis de Sade
Writer whose name became perversion