Samuel Richardson's Published Commentary on Clarissa, 1747-1765

Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady (1747-8) has long been recognised as one of the world's most significant literary achievements. Published to great critical acclaim in its own day, the novel profoundly influenced the development of English, American and Continental fiction. This three volume set brings together for the first time all that Samuel Richardson himself published on the composition, printing and interpretation of Clarissa.

Table of Contents:
Volume 1: Prefaces , Postscripts and Related Writings, Volume 2: Letters and Passages Restored from the Original Manuscripts of the History of Clarissa, 1751, Volume 3 A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflections, Contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison, 1755

Review :
'This fascinating collection finally allows scholars to witness the extraordinary process in which Richardson's reaction escaped his own control, revealing to us, for the first time, the making of one of the most influential works in the history of fiction.' - John Mullan, University College London 'This is an important and useful edition, including a mass of hard-to-find commentary in facsimile form. The three volumes are scrupulously edited with introductions and commentaries that are themselves significant contributions to scholarship on the eighteenth-century novel... Pickering & Chatto has done a fine thing in publishing these volumes.' - George Justice, The Years Work in English Studies 'Keymer ... offers new surmises about the provenance of or contributors to a text under consideration, arguing with a succinct and lucid logic that is almost irresistible... Letters and Passages Restored (1751) ... will make fascinating reading for students or scholars who have not previously seriously studied the revisions... I am also much humbled by the hard work, erudition, and enthusiasm of all the contributors to these volumes, and I am sure that other readers will join me in gratitude for having these elusive documents made available in an authentic format.' - Lois A Chaber, Eighteenth-Century Fiction '... Richardson criticism continues to suffer from a lack of reliable or appropriate scholarly editions of the actual works. The three volumes of Richardson's published commentary on Clarissa mark a very important move towards filling this gap. Produced under the general editorship of the late Florian Stuber (to whom they are dedicated) in association with Margaret Anne Doody, and with the co-ordination of Jim Springer Borck and Thomas Keymer, these well-produced volumes make available a number of important, sometimes rare Richardson texts (both published and unpublished) largely in the form of facsimile reprints. These valuable reprintings are all supported by excellent bibliographic headnotes and several, sometimes very substantial editorial and critical essays addressing questions of intertextuality, genre, and reader-response.' - David E Shuttleton, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies