Sir Charles Grandison 4 Volume Set: (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson)

One of the most important novels of the eighteenth-century, Sir Charles Grandison [1753] shaped the English courtship novel, and was loved and admired by both Jane Austen and George Eliot. The book follows the life of Sir Charles, a man parallel in virtue with Richardson's female paragons Clarissa and Pamela; and a response to the fallible protagonist Tom Jones in Fielding's popular satire of moralising novels. Forming part of the first full scholarly edition of Richardson's complete works, comprehensive general and textual introductions significantly revise and advance understanding of the composition and printing history of Richardson's final novel, and reveal the central place of Sir Charles in the literature of the period. Including Richardson's Historical Index for the first time in any edition, extensive annotations and expansive notes also give readers crucial context, and provides scholars with paths to follow for future research.

Table of Contents:
Volume 1: List of Illustrations; General Editors' Preface; Acknowledgements; Chronology; List of Abbreviations; General Introduction; Textual Introduction; The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1 & 2). Volume 2: The History of Sir Charles Grandison (3 & 4). Volume 3: The History of Sir Charles Grandison (5 & 6, Concluding note) Volume 4: The History of Sir Charles Grandison (Index: Historical and Characteristical, Similes and Allusions, Unlucky Omission, To the Public); Collation of Chapter Numbering; Emendations; Word-division; Bibliographical Descriptions of Early Editions; Explanatory Notes; Index.

About the Author :
E. Derek Taylor is Professor of English at Longwood University. Along with a monograph, Reason and Religion: Samuel Richardson's 'Clarissa' and the 'Famous Mr. Norris, of Bemerton' (Ashgate, 2009), he has published several essays specifically on Richardson, among them 'Richardson and Religion' in Samuel Richardson in Context (Cambridge, 2017). He has served as the Samuel Richardson editor for The Scriblerian for over fifteen years and co-edited, with Melvyn New, Mary Astell and John Norris's Letters Concerning the Love of God (Ashgate, 2005). Melvyn New, Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida, has been publishing on eighteenth-century literature for fifty years. He served as General Editor of the University of Florida Edition of the Works of Sterne, the ninth and final volume of which was published in 2014. Recent essays include 'Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison and Sterne: A Study in Influence', Modern Philology (2017); with M. C. Newbould, 'Reconsidering a Sternean Attribution: Cambridge University Library's 'Sterne Volume' ', The Library (2017); and with Robert G. Walker, Who Killed Tom Cumming the Quaker? Recovering the Life Story of an Eighteenth-Century Adventurer, Modern Philology (2019). He has been the Book Review Editor for The Scriblerian for the past fifteen years. Elizabeth Kraft is a Professor of English at the University of Georgia. Her most recent publications include a monograph, Restoration Stage Comedies and Hollywood Remarriage Films: In Conversation with Stanley Cavell (Routledge, 2017) and Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Henry Fielding (MLA, 2015) which she co-edited. She is the co-editor of The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld and Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose. She is currently working on an edition of Barbauld's literary criticism as well as a monograph on the she-tragedies of the Restoration and eighteenth century, tentatively titled Tears for Monimia.

Review :
'This handsome new Cambridge edition of Sir Charles Grandison packs the six volumes into three substantial tomes and adds a fourth for (very good) explanatory notes.' Norma Clarke, Times LIterary Supplement 'Any reader who has fully absorbed the terrors of Pamela's marriage or pursued to the end the intensities of Clarissa will want to read Grandison too, and so will Jane Austen fans curious about the novel said to have been her favorite. What awaits them is a love story fueled by embarrassment, a forerunner to the modern romantic comedy but also a worthy successor to Clarissa, in which the protagonists face situations so abysmally awkward as to require of them heroic feats of tact and moral imagination. That we now have a magisterial scholarly edition in print is cause for celebration.' Sarah Raff, Eighteenth-Century Studies, on The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson