Richardson, Samuel 1689-1761
English novelist

Born in Mackworth, Derbyshire, he was apprenticed to a printer, married his master's daughter, and set up in business for himself in Salisbury Court, London. Although he was represented as the model parent and champion of women, his three daughters seem to have had a repressed upbringing. His first novel, Pamela (1740), is 'a series of familiar letters ? published in order to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion', and this was the aim of all his works. In his second novel, Clarissa, Or the History of a Young Lady (7 vols, 1748), Richardson depicts the high life, of which he confessed he knew little, but the novel made Richardson famous, and he became acquainted with Dr Johnson and Edward Young among others. His third novel, Sir Charles Grandison (1754), designed to portray the perfect gentleman, turns on the question of divided love. His work influenced writers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, and the epistolary method was a means to suggest authenticity at a time when mere fiction was frowned upon.

Bibliography: I Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957); A Dobson, Samuel Richardson (1902)