PAMELA Or VIRTUE REWARDED

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ILLUSTRATEDANNOTATIONS*Biography of Samuel Richardson*About Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded*Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded Summary*Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded Character List*Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded Glossary*Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded Themes*Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded Quotes and Analysis*Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded Summary and Analysis of Letters I through X.*Summary and Analysis of Letters XI through XVIII.*Summary and Analysis of Letters XIX through XXIV.*Summary and Analysis of Letters XXV through XXXI and Editorial Material.*Summary and Analysis of Letter XXXII, the Beginning of Pamela's Journal, through the 6th Day of her Imprisonment.*Summary and Analysis of Pamela's Journal: The 7th Day of her Imprisonment through the 18th.*Summary and Analysis of Pamela's Journal: The 19th Day of her Imprisonment through the 35th.*Summary and Analysis of Pamela's Journal: The 36th Day of her Imprisonment through the 41st.*Summary and Analysis of Pamela's Journal: The 42nd Day of her Imprisonment through the 4th of her Freedom.*Summary and Analysis of Pamela's Journal: The 5th Day of her Freedom through the 10th.*Summary and Analysis of Pamela's Journal: The 1st Day of her Happiness through the 5th.*Summary and Analysis of Pamela's Journal: The 6th Day of her Happiness (Twice).*Summary and Analysis of Pamela's Journal: The 7th Day of her Happiness through the 14th.*Summary and Analysis of Pamela's Journal: The 15th Day of her Happiness through the Editorial Conclusion.*Richardson's Contribution to the Development of the Novel in English.*Essay QuestionsSamuel Richardson may have based his first novel on the story of a real-life affair between Hannah Sturges, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a coachman, and Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Baronet of Northampton, whom she married in 1725. He certainly based the form of the novel on his own aptitude for letter-writing: always prolific in private correspondence, he had recently tried his hand at writing fictionalized letters for publication, during which effort he had conceived the idea of a series of related letters all tending to the revelation of one story. He began work on Pamela on November 10, 1739 and completed it on January 10, 1740.Richardson's objects in writing Pamela were moral instruction and commercial success, perhaps in that order. As he explained to his friend Aaron Hill in a famous letter, his goal was to divert young readers from vapid romances by creating "a new Species of Writing that might possibly turn young People into a Course of Reading different from the Pomp and Parade of Romance-writing, and dismissing the improbable and marvellous, with which Novels generally abound, might tend to promote the Cause of Religion and Virtue." The nature of this "new species of writing" may seem obscure at first. Richardson felt that the best vehicle for a moral lesson was an exemplary character; he also felt that the most effective presentation of an exemplary character was a realistic presentation that evoked the reader's sympathy and identification, as opposed to an ideal one that rendered the character as inhumanly perfect. For the project of rendering an exemplary character in a realistic manner the appropriate form, he reasoned, was the novel, providing as it did ample scope in which to flesh out psychological complexities and mix dominant virtues with smaller but significant flaws. In itself, Richardson's idea of combining instruction with entertainment was, of course, hardly original; then as now, it was a highly traditional argument for the moral utility of art. Richardson's innovation was a generic one consisting, in part, of his producing a respectable and morally elevating work in the despised genre of the novel, hitherto the province of only the cheapest diversions.Pamela achieved extraordinary popularity among three groups whose tastes do not often coincide: the public, the litterateurs,

Genre: Fiction / Classics (fancy, right?)