In accordance with the usual textual policy of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson (CEWSR), this edition of Pamela in Her Exalted Condition offers a critical unmodernized text of the first edition of the novel, published on 7 December 1741 (dated 1742); the text is based on a copy of this edition at the Newberry Library in Chicago (VAULT Case 3A 881, v. 3–4). Although exhaustive historical collation is beyond the scope of the CEWSR, in preparing the text I have collated this copy against two other copies of the first edition (British Library, c.71.cc.8, v. 3–4; and a second Newberry Library copy, Case Y 115 .R4086, v. 3–4) and discovered two major press-variants as well as a handful of minor corrections made in press. As discussed in the General Introduction, Richardson began to revise Pamela in Her Exalted Condition, in anticipation of the octavo edition, even as the first edition was being printed. Two typographical errors found in the text are recorded in the errata appearing at the end of the preface of the first edition: ‘vol. iii, p. 6. l. 23. dele it. p. 10. l. 21 dele not.’ (vol. iii, p. iv). The first major stop-press correction within the first edition occurs in vol. iii, p. 299 (p. 202 below), with the addition of a footnote (missing in the British Library copy, but present in the two Newberry Library copies) assuring readers that Mr. Williams is not guilty of simony. To accommodate the footnote at the bottom of the page, the penultimate paragraph has been reset in the Newberry Library copies and a clause, originally reading ‘but I was still more affected’, shortened to ‘but I was still more so’ in the last paragraph. The second major stop-press correction, appearing in the British Library copy and the Newberry Library copy on which the Cambridge text is based (vol. iv, p. 242; p. 452 below), cleans up some of the clumsy grammar and syntax of the version appearing in the second Newberry Library copy: ‘The CHEEK came next, proceeded Mr. B. I allow’d her Ladyship's to have a livelier Carmine there, and that hers was somewhat rounder, her Ladyship being a little plumper than my Girl; but that your Face being rather smaller featur’d of the two, there was an inimitably finer Turn in your Cheek, than I had ever seen in my Life.’