One of the most spectacular successes of the flourishing literary marketplace of eighteenth-century London, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world "into two different Parties, Pamelists and Anti-pamelists," even eclipsing the sensational factional politics of the day. Preached for its morality, and denounced as pornography in disguise, it vividly describes a young servant's long resistance to the attempts of her predatory master to seduce her. Written in the voice of its low-born heroine, Pamela is not only a work of pioneering psychological complexity, but also a compelling and provocative study of power and its abuse.
Based on the original text of 1740, from which Richardson later retreated in a series of defensive revisions, this edition makes available the version of Pamela that aroused such widespread controversy on its first appearance.
Edited with Notes by Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely
Introduction by Thomas Keymer
About the Author
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was an English novelist who expanded the dramatic possibilities of the novel by his invention and use of the letter form (“epistolary novel”). His major novels were Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747–48).
Thomas Keymer's books include Richardson's Clarissa and the Eighteenth Century Reader (1992) and the OWC edition of Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Shamela.
