Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The novel before “the novel”
- 2 Biographical form in the novel
- 3 Legal discourse and novelistic form
- 4 Novelistic history
- 5 Interiorities
- 6 Samuel Richardson
- 7 Domesticities and novel narratives
- 8 Obscenity and the erotics of fiction
- 9 Cognitive alternatives to interiority
- 10 The novel, the British nation, and Britain's four kingdoms
- 11 Money's productivity in narrative fiction
- 12 “The southern unknown countries”: imagining the Pacific in the eighteenth-century novel
- 13 Editorial fictions: paratexts, fragments, and the novel
- 14 Extraordinary narrators: metafiction and it-narratives
- 15 Romance redivivus
- 16 Gothic success and gothic failure: formal innovation in a much-maligned genre
- 17 Sir Walter Scott: historiography contested by fiction
- 18 How and where we live now: Edgeworth, Austen, Dickens, and Trollope
- 19 From Wollstonecraft to Gissing: the revolutionary emergence of women, children, and labor in novelistic narrative
- 20 Spaces and places (I): the four nations
- 21 Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell: politics and its limits
- 22 Populations: pictures of prose in Hardy, Austen, Eliot, and Thackeray
- 23 The novel amid new sciences
- 24 George Eliot's past and present: emblematic histories
- 25 The Bildungsroman
- 26 The novel and social cognition: internalist and externalist
- 27 Clamors of eros
- 28 The novel as immoral, anti-social force
- 29 Sensations: gothic, horror, crime fiction, detective fiction
- 30 Realism and romance
- 31 Spaces and places (II): around the globe
- 32 Imperial romance
- 33 The art novel: Impressionists and aesthetes
- 34 The impact of lyric, drama, and verse narrative on novel form
- 35 Henry James and Joseph Conrad: the pursuit of autonomy
- 36 Joyce: the modernist novel's revolution in matter and manner
- 37 Richardson, Woolf, Lawrence: the modernist novel's experiments with narrative (I)
- 38 Wells, Forster, Firbank, Lewis, Huxley, Compton-Burnett, Green: the modernist novel's experiments with narrative (II)
- 39 Beyond autonomy: political dimensions of modernist novels
- 40 Fiction by women: continuities and changes, 1930–1990
- 41 The novel amid other discourses
- 42 The novel and thirty years of war
- 43 Thrillers
- 44 Novelistic complications of spaces and places: the four nations and regionalism
- 45 The series novel: a dominant form
- 46 The novel's West Indian revolution
- 47 Postwar renewals of experiment, 1945–1979
- 48 The novel amid new technology and media
- 49 Novels of same-sex desire
- 50 From Wells to John Berger: the social democratic era of the novel
- 51 The postcolonial novel: history and memory
- 52 History and heritage: the English novel's persistent historiographical turn
- 53 Twentieth-century satire: the poetics and politics of negativity
- 54 Unending romance: science fiction and fantasy in the twentieth century
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
6 - Samuel Richardson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2012
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The novel before “the novel”
- 2 Biographical form in the novel
- 3 Legal discourse and novelistic form
- 4 Novelistic history
- 5 Interiorities
- 6 Samuel Richardson
- 7 Domesticities and novel narratives
- 8 Obscenity and the erotics of fiction
- 9 Cognitive alternatives to interiority
- 10 The novel, the British nation, and Britain's four kingdoms
- 11 Money's productivity in narrative fiction
- 12 “The southern unknown countries”: imagining the Pacific in the eighteenth-century novel
- 13 Editorial fictions: paratexts, fragments, and the novel
- 14 Extraordinary narrators: metafiction and it-narratives
- 15 Romance redivivus
- 16 Gothic success and gothic failure: formal innovation in a much-maligned genre
- 17 Sir Walter Scott: historiography contested by fiction
- 18 How and where we live now: Edgeworth, Austen, Dickens, and Trollope
- 19 From Wollstonecraft to Gissing: the revolutionary emergence of women, children, and labor in novelistic narrative
- 20 Spaces and places (I): the four nations
- 21 Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell: politics and its limits
- 22 Populations: pictures of prose in Hardy, Austen, Eliot, and Thackeray
- 23 The novel amid new sciences
- 24 George Eliot's past and present: emblematic histories
- 25 The Bildungsroman
- 26 The novel and social cognition: internalist and externalist
- 27 Clamors of eros
- 28 The novel as immoral, anti-social force
- 29 Sensations: gothic, horror, crime fiction, detective fiction
- 30 Realism and romance
- 31 Spaces and places (II): around the globe
- 32 Imperial romance
- 33 The art novel: Impressionists and aesthetes
- 34 The impact of lyric, drama, and verse narrative on novel form
- 35 Henry James and Joseph Conrad: the pursuit of autonomy
- 36 Joyce: the modernist novel's revolution in matter and manner
- 37 Richardson, Woolf, Lawrence: the modernist novel's experiments with narrative (I)
- 38 Wells, Forster, Firbank, Lewis, Huxley, Compton-Burnett, Green: the modernist novel's experiments with narrative (II)
- 39 Beyond autonomy: political dimensions of modernist novels
- 40 Fiction by women: continuities and changes, 1930–1990
- 41 The novel amid other discourses
- 42 The novel and thirty years of war
- 43 Thrillers
- 44 Novelistic complications of spaces and places: the four nations and regionalism
- 45 The series novel: a dominant form
- 46 The novel's West Indian revolution
- 47 Postwar renewals of experiment, 1945–1979
- 48 The novel amid new technology and media
- 49 Novels of same-sex desire
- 50 From Wells to John Berger: the social democratic era of the novel
- 51 The postcolonial novel: history and memory
- 52 History and heritage: the English novel's persistent historiographical turn
- 53 Twentieth-century satire: the poetics and politics of negativity
- 54 Unending romance: science fiction and fantasy in the twentieth century
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Writing to Johannes Stinstra in 1753, Samuel Richardson revealed his childhood fascination for learning the secrets of the heart. He began his writing career as a precocious busybody whose curiosity thrived in his crowded urban world. Neighbors, particularly young women, revealed small sins and desires to serious young Samuel. One victim under his surveillance took offense. Richardson was “not Eleven Years old when [he] wrote, spontaneously, to a Widow of near Fifty … who was … continually fomenting Quarrels & Disturbances, by Backbiting & Scandal.” Adopting “the Stile and Address of a Person in Years,” Richardson “expostulated with her. But my Handwriting was known.” The boy was discovered and “chid” for his freedoms, but he continued to be an “early Favourite with all the young Women of Taste & Reading in the Neighbourhood,” reading to them while they sewed. When he was “not more than Thirteen,” he served as “Secretary” to several young women who needed help in writing their love letters. We have then a “bashful” and grave adolescent writer in the making, given to impersonations, happy to act as amanuensis to encourage or chide, “at the very time that the Heart … was open before me, overflowing,” and the lover was “dreading to be taken at her Word.”
Just as happy to expostulate with a backbiting zealot, Richardson finds power in assuming a character while exposing the heart. In both examples the power of the impersonated style, that of the elderly scold or the nervous lover disguising her feelings, is profound.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of the English Novel , pp. 97 - 112Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012