Title: LOUISE CURRAN. Samuel Richardson and the Art of Letter-Writing.
Abstract:With apologies to Byron, might Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) have been the first English writer to ‘[wake] up and find himself famous?’ For the bulk of his professional life, Richardson rose steadily,...With apologies to Byron, might Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) have been the first English writer to ‘[wake] up and find himself famous?’ For the bulk of his professional life, Richardson rose steadily, from apprentice to owner, as a London printer whose output included everything from newspapers, to Parliamentary records, to literary, scientific, and theological works of all modes and genres. With the exception of occasional moralistic or political ephemera (some of it still being tracked down, thanks in particular to the efforts of Keith Maslen and John Dussinger), Richardson wrote little before the age of 50. Those who knew the man knew him as a printer, not an author. All that changed with the publication of Pamela in 1740. Claims of anonymity did not hold for long, and two new beings sprang into existence at virtually the same time: Richardson the major European novelist, and Richardson the irrepressible correspondent. Curran takes the latter as her primary object of study here—but the simultaneous genesis offers a clue to her thesis.Read More
Publication Year: 2017
Publication Date: 2017-06-23
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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