2 - Samuel Richardson

Summary

In February 1751, Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) contributed an essay to Samuel Johnson's periodical The Rambler. Johnson, in introducing Richardson's piece, described his friend as one 'who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue'. As a lexicographer, Johnson exempted Richardson from his general policy of not citing contemporaries and quoted him in his Dictionary on over one hundred occasions, far more than any other living author. By 1761, the year of his death, Richardson occupied a commanding position among European writers and was celebrated in a famous eulogy by Denis Diderot. Both Johnson and Diderot were struck by Richardson's profound insights into human psychology, and Diderot regarded him as a worthy successor to Homer. Richardson had achieved his reputation as the originator of a new kind of novel-writing on the strength of three works published over the two previous decades: Pamela (1740-1), Clarissa (1747-8), and Sir Charles Grandison (1753-4). Pamela created a sensation on its first publication and was the best-selling novel of its time. Richardson's masterpiece, Clarissa, is among the greatest (and longest) of all English novels; its protagonists, Clarissa and Lovelace, are archetypal figures. Frances Burney, writing to her son, declared that Clarissa 'has the deepest tragic powers that the pen can address to the heart'.