Artist: Joseph Highmore,
Location: Worshipful Company of Stationers & Newspaper
makers,
UK
In 1748, Samuel Richardson began his epistolary novel which, by 1749, would reach one million words in length. The story behind his collection of letters was that of Clarissa Harlowe, an 18-year-old girl of a wealthy middle class family and the trials and tribulations of her tragically short life. Through the letters in the text, Richardson tells us of her experiences, the things in store for her, and her own psychology.
This Web project critically explores some important episodes of the first edition of the novel. Most of the commentary you will see has been developed by students enrolled in Professor Mark James Morreale's Fall 2002 and Fall 2004 English 336L-111 [Eighteenth-Century England and the Colonies] classes.