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
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...
Literary responses Charlotte Lennox
The Monthly Review called the first two volumes very judicious and truly critical.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
9: 145
CL later wrote that the work had been received with very general favour
Isles, Duncan. “The Lennox Collection (Concluded)”. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol.
19
, No. 4, Oct. 1971, pp. 416-35.
422
and was translated into German...
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...
Literary responses Elizabeth Meeke
Literary historian Edward Copeland points out that the hero and the Wheelers are opposites in their relation to money, and also that Mrs Wheeler's death (in hospital of injuries received from falling downstairs while drunk)...
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...
Literary responses Margaret Minifie
The Critical belatedly noted: She is now no longer in partnership, but sets up for herself.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
50 (1780): 168
It approved the novel's morally didactic tone, its style, characters, and narrative, but warned that it...
Literary responses Susan Smythies
The Critical Review noted that SS was imitating Richardson in this novel (as she had imitated Fielding in her last). In The Brothers it found all the machinery of a modern novel, without the overall...
Literary responses Sarah Scott
Samuel Richardson (given an advance copy by the publisher) reported the verdict of his wife and daughters, and the writer Jane Collier (a friend particularly of his daughter Anne ), that the book was lacking...
Literary responses Eliza Haywood
In the Monthly Review, Ralph Griffiths passed a judgement which was inflected against Betsy Thoughtless by issues of gender. He guessed that the author was female because of the novel's attention to matters of...
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...
Literary responses May Laffan
Overlooking the weak management of the plot because the main aim of the author is a social picture, the Athenæum called Christy Carew a truthful account of Dublin society told in such a way that...
Literary responses Mary Lamb
In reading The Father's Wedding-day, Walter Savage Landor said he pressed my temples with both hands, and tears ran down to my elbows.. He read this story over and over again,
qtd. in
Burton, Sarah. A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb. Viking, 2003.
244
and...
Literary responses Marghanita Laski
The Times Literary Supplement called this novel a sad and cautionary idyll, and yet [a]ltogether a witty lark.
Charques, Richard Denis. “Mayfair Comedy”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2235, 2 Dec. 1944, p. 581.
581
Critic Phyllis Lassner compares ML 's Clarissa to Samuel Richardson 's, noting that both heroines are...
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
Literary responses Mary Leapor
This volume attracted attention from Samuel Richardson , Christopher Smart , and the young William Cowper , as well as from its chief promoters, John Duncombe and Susanna Highmore .
Rizzo, Betty. “Molly Leapor: An Anxiety for Influence”. The Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin, Vol.
4
, 1991, pp. 313-43.
327-8

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