Name : Anjali Madhavjibhai Rathod
Enrollment No. : 4069206420220024
Roll No. : 2
Batch : M.A. Sem. 1 (2022-24)
Subject Code & Paper No. : 22393 - Paper 102 - Literature of the Neoclassical Period
Email Address : rathodanjali20022002ui@gmail.com
Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English - Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University - Bhavnagar - 364001
A detailed note on Samuel Richardson & Known as First Modern English Novelist
Samuel Richardson was born on Aug. 19, 1689, Mackworth, near Derby, Derbyshire, England. And died on July 4, 1761, Parson’s Green, near London), 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).
Richardson was 50 years old when he wrote Pamela, but of his first 50 years little is known. His ancestors were of yeoman stock. His father, also Samuel, and his mother’s father, Stephen Hall, became London tradesmen, and his father, after the death of his first wife, married Stephen’s daughter, Elizabeth, in 1682.
Richardson was the son of a joiner. As a son Samuel did not get sound education but he had been gifted with talent. For example, writing letters. Thus, he was very much popular among working girls as he used to write love letters for them . This practice gave him the knowledge of understanding uneducated but sentimental ladies which helped him a lot in his journey of writing.
Samuel Richardson is important because he invented the epistolary novel. Richardson's works influenced 19th century English novelists like Jane Austen and other authors who used the English gentry as their subjects. His first epistolary novel, Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded is considered by some to be the first English novel.
Though not educated well, Richardson was a hardworking boy and established himself at a particular height in his profession and became a master-printer and printer to the king also. He continued his occupation till his death. Apart from it, he had a deep sense of observation of mannears that expressed in his works so tactbully that the redders are automatically attracted towards his works.
His Life
In his professional life Richardson was hardworking and successful. With the growth in prominence of his press went his steady increase in prestige as a member, an officer, and later master, of the Stationers’ Company (the guild for those in the book trade).
During the 1730s his press became known as one of the three best in London, and with prosperity he moved to a more spacious London house and leased the first of three country houses in which he entertained a circle of friends that included Dr. Johnson, the painter William Hogarth, the actors Colley Cibber and David Garrick, Edward Young, and Arthur Onslow, speaker of the House of Commons, whose influence in 1733 helped to secure for Richardson lucrative contracts for government printing that later included the journals of the House.(Britannica)
The author resolved the conflicts of both characters too easily, perhaps, because he was firmly committed to the plot of the true story he had remembered. When the instantaneous popularity of Pamela led to a spurious continuation of her story, he wrote his own sequel, Pamela in her Exalted Condition (1742), a two-volume work that did little to enhance his reputation.
His literary Works
As a writer, Richardson started his literary journey with a series of ‘Familiar Letters’. He decided to tell the story of a girl’s inner life in the midst of English neighbours. This approach marked an epoch in the history of English literature.
As a modern novelist, Richardson has certainly contributed concrete literature. At the age of thirteen he started writing practice through love letters that ultimately led him towards the writing of novels.
Richardson's best-known works are:
Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded (1740). A wild commercial success, this first epistolary novel tells the redemptive story of a housemaid who maintains her virtue and is rewarded by her successful marriage to a wealthy man who becomes virtuous following her lead.
Pamela in her Exalted Condition (1742). This sequel received negative reviews from critics and praise from readers. It pursues similar themes as the first novel as it follows the life of the now-married Pamela.
Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (published in volumes, 1747–48). This novel paints a more complex picture of its characters. Using correspondence between the main characters and their confidants, Clarissa gives the reader a deeper view into character motivation as the characters navigate lust, romance, and the prospect of marriage.
The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). Written in response to calls for a moral and upstanding male protagonist, in contrast to the villains of Pamela and Clarissa, this novel tells the story of a heroic protagonist who rescues a woman in distress.
His works, long and often didactic, do not possess the timelessness of such novelists as Sterne or Defoe. Nonetheless, Richardson is one of the most important authors of his period; his influence on subsequent novelists such as Jane Austen was immense, and virtually no author of fiction in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century could escape Richardson's lengthy shadow.
* As a novelist , Richardson’s novels carry certain outstanding features which are as here:
Moral or Didactic Purpose
Richardson emphasizes on moral purpose. He always focuses on utilitarian virtues which result in material prosperity. Richardson’s novels have moral purposes. These are didactic and serious and imply the contrast between virtue and villainy, between innocence and incest, between love and lust. For example, Pamela’s Marriage , her struggle and ultimately her reward.
He manipulates the moral ideals through these contrasting features in human nature and behaviour. The excessive ethical views and tragic bearing have rather sentimental effects. But this sort of sentimentality was the fashion of the time.
Psychological study
The most remarkable characteristic of Richardson’s novel is his art of psychological study. He is a master of understanding women's hearts, his psychological study of human motives and feelings are rare to observe in other writers. He portrays the lower middle class with great observation. He has great art to use psychology in his novels.
Epistolary Method
Epistolary format is part of Richardson's revolutionary contribution to the development of the novel in English, for the first-person narration of events, in nearly real-time, allows the novelist to explore, quite naturally, the depths and nuances of his character’s psyche.
Richardson’s novels are very long because of its epistolary method and series of letters. Their plot is mostly simple and growly developed. Thus, it seems that the novels have no shape. Richardson's greatest contribution was his introduction of character insight to the novel. Richardson introduced "the deliberate and detailed analysis of conduct, motive, action and reaction which was essential for further progress".
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used.
Art of Characterization
Another remarkable characteristic of Richardson’s novel is his Art of Characterization. The greatness of Richardson’s is related to his characterization. We know that the success of any writer depends upon his characters. Richardson’s characters are full of life, not like a puppet show. His master of understanding women's hearts, his psychological study of human motives and feelings are rare to observe in other writers. He portrays the lower middle class with great observation.
Unique Sentimental appeal
Richardson was sensitive to the criticism and ridicule, and it influenced his many revisions of the novel. In particular, in subsequent editions of the novel he elevates Pamela’s style of writing and speaking, progressively eliminating rusticisms, regionalisms, and other markers of her lower-class status.
The appeal of Richardson’s novels is certainly sentimental to the heart. His style is simple but serves the purpose. It may be his limit. Hence, his purpose of writing novels was to inculcate virtue and good deeds. He has given something unique to the literary world. Hence, his purpose of writing novels was to instruct virtue and good department.
Styles and Themes of Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson wrote his novels using the epistolary novel style, in which all the books are made up of letters. These letters are meant to be written during the time that the stories take place by the main character. They either described a scene or dialogue within the scene. The stories used the themes of female dominance over the emotions of a man, and male dominance over the physicality of a woman. Also, many women in his stories are put under a great amount of distress, which takes up most of the plot of the novel .
Richardson was an apprentice to a London printer, John Wilde. Sometime after completing his apprenticeship he became associated with the Leakes, a printing family whose presses he eventually took over when he set up in business for himself in 1721 and married Martha Wilde, the daughter of his master. Elizabeth Leake, the sister of a prosperous bookseller of Bath, became his second wife in 1733, two years after Martha’s death.
His domestic life was marked by tragedy. All six of the children from his first marriage died in infancy or childhood. By his second wife he had four daughters who survived him, but two other children died in infancy. These and other bereavements contributed to the nervous ailments of his later life.
To Sum Up
We can Say that Richardson is the father of English Novels. He has given a very remarkable contribution to English Novels. Richardson who had disciples when he died. Some of them show the influence of Clarissa, which seems to have been most responsible for the cult of Richardson that arose on the European continent. It was Grandison, however, that set the tone of most of Richardson’s English followers and for Jane Austen, who was said to have remembered “every circumstance” in this novel, everything “that was ever said or done.”
By the end of the 18th century, Richardson’s reputation was on the wane both in England and abroad. However, it was reborn in the late 20th century, when Clarissa was rediscovered as one of the great psychological novels of European literature.
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