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.
Stipple engraving of Samuel Richardson, used by Anna Letitia Barbauld in her edition of Richardson's correspondence. He is standing with his right hand tucked into his jacket and a book in his left hand; in the related painting by Joseph Highmore, Richardson holds a paper instead of a book.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Phebe Gibbes
The hero and heroine survive an impossible concatenation of wicked attempts to make them miserable, to arrive at last at perfect (and well-funded) happiness. But the novel has remarkable aspects. In a systematic role-reversal, two...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Gilding
Like her, he was a contributor to magazines: a juvenile work by him appeared in the Lady's Magazine in 1775, and he later contributed to the European and other magazines under the name of Fidelio...
Textual Production Hannah Glasse
This publication history shows the nature of the unfettered, cut-throat publishing world of the mid eighteenth century. John Exshaw of Dublin, where in 1762 neither the Eales nor the Glasse work had appeared, had probably...
Intertextuality and Influence Catherine Gore
Historical personages, from the Prince of Wales and his mistress Lady Jersey downwards, do appear in this book. It ends on the death of Charles James Fox , apostrophised as one of the great and...
Literary responses Françoise de Graffigny
The novel's combination of originality and popularity at once provoked debate. Like Samuel Richardson (who began publishing Clarissa in the year of Lettres d'une Péruvienne), FGreceived numerous letters from readers who begged her...
Textual Production Anne Grant
The future AG addressed to Harriet Reid a letter written to the moment in the Richardsonian style, bit by bit throughout the day.
Grant, Anne. Letters from the Mountains. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1806, 3 vols.
1: 6-22
Textual Features Anne Grant
AG is a conscious artist as a letter-writer, playing with the influence not only of Richardson but also, in later years, of Hugh Blair 's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. The earliest letters...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Grant
Her range of literary reference and comment is wide: as well as Richardson (whose Clarissa she unequivocally praises),
Grant, Anne. Letters from the Mountains. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809, 3 vols.
2: 45-8
it encompasses Blair , Sterne and Smollett as travel-writers, and Homer . Grant charges Samuel Johnson
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Green
This preface is headed by two Latin words (one with a faulty grammatical ending) from Ovid 's description of chaos. SG slams both male and female novelists, chiefly authors of gothic or horrid novels and...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Green
The heroine's name, Clarissa, is presumably a belated tribute to Richardson . It is hard to gauge the weight of the allusion. Beautiful, dignified, superior, and so forth, Clarissa Dorrington is persecuted by her guardian's...
Textual Features Elizabeth Griffith
The letters are edited versions of those the couple exchanged in actual life, in which EG 's sense and worth persuaded Richard to marry her.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Henry is an Irish gentleman whose first idea is a...
Literary responses Elizabeth Griffith
The original letters were immensely popular with readers (among others Sarah Harriet Burney was a devotee); their authors became famous under their pseudonyms. Not everyone agreed in admiring them, however. Lady Bradshaigh remarked to Samuel Richardson
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Griffith
He describes her with a line from Donne 's Second Anniversary. EG 's range of reference here includes Rousseau , Milton , Frances Greville , and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu . Characters discuss and...
Intertextuality and Influence Susannah Gunning
This non-epistolary novel is broadly satirical. The protagonist's name, Clarissa, makes ironical reference to Richardson . The opening pages relate, as prologue, the early married life of her terribly young parents, Sir Frederick and Lady...
Literary responses Anne Halkett
This work is the basis of AH 's reputation. The publication of 1875 provoked some biographical and critical comment, but less than might have been expected.
Halkett, Anne, and Ann, Lady Fanshawe. “Preface, Introduction, Select Bibliography”. The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe, edited by John Loftis, Clarendon Press, 1979, p. v - xxi.
xix
Editor John Loftis praised AH 's fluent prose...

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