Samuel Richardson in Context

Description

Since the publication of his novel Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded in 1740, Samuel Richardson's place in the English literary tradition has been secured. But how can that place best be described? Over the three centuries since embarking on his printing career the 'divine' novelist has been variously understood as moral crusader, advocate for women, pioneer of the realist novel and print innovator. Situating Richardson's work within these social, intellectual and material contexts, this new volume of essays identifies his centrality to the emergence of the novel, the self-help book, and the idea of the professional author, as well as his influence on the development of the modern English language, the capitalist economy, and gendered, medicalized, urban, and national identities. This book enables a fuller understanding and appreciation of Richardson's life, work and legacy, and points the way for future studies of one of English literature's most celebrated novelists.

Peter Sabor holds the Canada Research Chair in Eighteenth-Century Studies at McGill University, Montreal, where he is Director of the Burney Centre. His publications include, as co-author, Pamela in the Marketplace (Cambridge, 2005) and, as editor, Juvenilia in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen (Cambridge, 2006), The Cambridge Companion to Emma (Cambridge, 2015), and The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson with Lady Bradshaigh and Lady Echlin (3 volume set, Cambridge, 2016). Betty A. Schellenberg is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. Her publications include Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture (Cambridge, 2016), an edition of Samuel Richardson's Correspondence Primarily on Sir Charles Grandison (1750-4) (Cambridge, 2015); The Professionalization of Women Writers in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2005); Reconsidering the Bluestockings (co-edited with Nicole Pohl, 2003); and The Conversational Circle: Rereading the English Novel, 1740-75 (1996).

'All the essays are lucid and well informed, provocative and engaging, erudite and somehow still accessible to nonspecialists. The book includes 21 illustrations and is printed on fine-quality paper with noticeable attention to details of production, as befits the subject of this study. Both those who have long loved Richardson and those coming to him for the first time will find this volume invaluable for study of his works. Essential.' Choice '... Sabor and ... Schellenberg have put together a superb 'In Context' collection for Cambridge: Samuel Richardson in Context. Every single essay is excellent. The thirty-seven chapters represent the best Richardson scholarship out there ...' Cynthia Wall, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900