Description
Book SynopsisThis classic novel tells the story, in letters, of the beautiful and virtuous Clarissa Harlowe's pursuit by the brilliant, unscrupulous rake Robert Lovelace. The epistolary structure allows Richardson to create layered and fully realized characters, as well as an intriguing uncertainty about the reliability of the various "narrators." Clarissa emerges as a heroine at once rational and passionate, self-sacrificing and defiant, and her story has gripped readers since the novel's first publication in 1747-1748.
This new abridgment is designed to retain the novel's rich characterizations and relationships, and reproduces individual letters in their entirety whenever possible. This Broadview Edition provides a uniquely accessible entry point for readers, while retaining much of the powerful reading experience of the complete novel.
Trade ReviewClarissa is one of the towering masterpieces of the eighteenth century, and it is impossible to understand the literature of the period and the rise of the novel without it. This new edition provides a rigorously conceived, expertly executed solution to the problem of abridgment, and restores to the undergraduate classroom a work previously excluded by sheer length." - Thomas Keymer, University of Toronto
"Eager to introduce rather than replace a masterpiece, Richetti and Bowers offer a practical classroom compromise to the familiar problem of Richardson's prolixity. Surely an abridgment of this magnitude—with its smart choice of the 1751 third edition as copy text, its accessible introduction and notes, and an appendix that resurrects important historical contexts—will tempt new generations of readers to consider, eventually, all of
Clarissa." - Janine Barchas, University of Texas at Austin
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Introduction
Samuel Richardson: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
Clarissa
Appendix A: Prefatory Material for the Second Edition, 1749
Appendix B: Richardson’s Correspondence
- Correspondence with “Mrs. Belfour”/Lady Bradshaigh (1748–53)
- Letter 1: Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson
- Letter 2: Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh
- Letter 3: Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson
- Letter 4: Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh
- Letter 5: Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh
- Correspondence with Johannes Stinstra (1753–54)
- Letter 1: Richardson to Johannes Stinstra
- Letter 2: Johannes Stinstra to Richardson
- Letter 3: Richardson to Johannes Stinstra
Appendix C: Eighteenth-Century Responses to Clarissa
- Henry Fielding, Letter to Richardson (1748)
- Sarah Fielding, Letter to Richardson (1749)
- Review of Clarissa by Albrecht Von Haller (1749)
- Review of Clarissa by Samuel Johnson (1750)
- Elizabeth Echlin, An Alternative Ending to Richardson’s Clarissa (1754–55)
- Denis Diderot, “In Praise of Richardson” (1761)
- From James Beattie, “On Fable and Romance” (1783)
- Anna Lætitia Aikin Barbauld, “The Life of Samuel Richardson, with Remarks on His Writings” (1804)
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