Samuel Richardson

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Standard Name: Richardson, Samuel
SR 's three epistolary novels, published between 1740 and 1753, exerted an influence on women's writing which was probably stronger than that of any other novelist, male or female, of the century. He also facilitated women's literary careers in his capacity as member of the publishing trade, and published a letter-writing manual and a advice-book for printers' apprentices.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Marjorie Bowen
To educate herself further, she read widely, setting herself literary exercises, writing verse imitating or dramatising Chaucer , Spenser , and Browning . However, she writes that at that time, I had read no really...
Intertextuality and Influence Marjorie Bowen
MB recalls being influenced at an early age by her enjoyment of Tennyson 's Idylls of the King, Wilde 's Picture of Dorian Gray, the novels of Sir Walter Scott , and Richardson
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Marjorie Bowen
MB credits British women novelists for modifying the methods of the great European novelists, noting in particular Dorothy Richardson 's perfection of the stream-of-consciousness technique. She draws a contrast between Dorothy Richardson 's Miriam and...
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Henry James 's review in 1865 considered Braddon's success alongside that of Collins , pronouncing her the founder of the sensation novel (defined as devising domestic mysteries adapted to the wants of a sternly prosaic...
Literary responses Frances Brooke
She thought it had been too long, with too little plot, and that the subscription method had not been to its benefit. Critic Juliet McMaster believes that Jane Austen had Emily Montague in mind in...
Textual Production Frances Brooke
FB apologised to Thomas Cadell about her delay (caused by ill-health) in completing a life of Samuel Richardson .Cadell, Jr
Brooke, Frances. “Introduction”. The Excursion, edited by Paula R. Backscheider and Hope D. Cotton, University Press of Kentucky, p. ix - xlix.
xlix
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
187, 234n1
Textual Production Frances Brooke
Susanna Duncombe offered FB permission to use (for her life of Richardson ) Duncombe's now well-known sketch of him reading aloud.
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
188
Textual Production Frances Brooke
FB 's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. Samuel Richardson was published in the Universal Magazine.
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
188-9
Catto, Susan J. Modest Ambition: The Influence of Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and the Ideal of Female Diffidence on Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Frances Brooke. University of Oxford.
276
Literary responses Frances Brooke
Highly positive reviews included one from Voltaire in France suggesting that this was the finest epistolary novel to appear in English during the decade or so since the last work of Richardson .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
The Critical...
Textual Features Anita Brookner
AB addresses her topic with gusto: The slashing and irreverent critics, often totally unqualified and inaccurate, now stand before us slightly scarred by the verdicts of posterity.
Brookner, Anita. The Genius of the Future. Phaidon.
2
Not a historian of literature so much...
Textual Features Frances Burney
Evelina opens with an ode to Charles Burney (unnamed) as Author of my Being, which sounds like an apology for having written.
Doody, Margaret Anne. Frances Burney: The Life in the Works. Cambridge University Press.
37
The preface acknowledges the formative influence of Richardson (as well as Henry Fielding
Literary responses Lady Charlotte Bury
Edward Copeland argues that this text, though designed to ride the wave of the new silver-fork novel, draws its influences from an earlier generation: Frances Burney , Susan Ferrier , and Richardson 's Sir Charles...
Textual Production Lady Eleanor Butler
Sarah Ponsonby bequeathed the journals to Caroline Hamilton , and Harriet Pigott therefore supposed that they were written by Ponsonby .
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, p. vii - viii; various pages.
vii
They have been published in several selections: by Mrs G. H. [Eva Mary] Bell
Intertextuality and Influence Medora Gordon Byron
The title-page quotes Milton 's Paradise Lost (There wanted yet the master-work); the preface quotes Samuel Johnson saying that the novelist needs to have first-hand experience of the living world, but that...
Education Catherine Carswell
In her unfinished autobiography, CC remembers that while she grew up there were no novels in the house except Sir Walter Scott 's, and a small, fat, small-printed volume, bound in ornamental red and black...

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