The London Journal welcomed the book with a poem by an anonymous male reader who recorded how it had overcome his initial prejudice against the idea of a woman author. Richardson probably took the name Pamela from this work. Bluestocking Elizabeth Vesey owned a copy. Clara Reeve commented in 1785 that in this version Arcadiawas thought to lose more beauties than it gained, but it was the shape in which most eighteenth-century readers encountered Arcadia. It has been edited by Dianne Osland , as volumes 2 and 3 of Continuations to Sidney's Arcadia, 1607-1867, Pickering and Chatto , 4 volumes, 2014.

The influential feminist group known as Redstockings (from an idea of recuperating and radicalizing the label Bluestockings) was founded in the USA.