Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady

By Samuel Richardson, Sheila Ortiz Taylor and Lynn Shepherd

One of the first great British novels, Samuel Richardson’s classic tale became a legend to his own age and remains so today.

Defying her parents’ desire for her to marry a loathsome man for his wealth, the virtuous Clarissa escapes into the dangerous arms of the charming rogue Lovelace, whose intentions are much less than honorable. This thought-provoking work, written entirely in intimate letters, exposes the delicacy and complexity of affairs of the human heart. The fatal attraction between villain and victim builds and unfolds into a relationship that haunts the imagination as fully as that of Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde.

Abridged and with an Introduction by Sheila Ortiz-Taylor and a New Afterword by Lynn Shepherd

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Jun 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9780698149014

Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was an English writer and printer. Born the son of a carpenter, Richardson received a limited education before becoming a printer’s apprentice. He established his own shop in 1719 and received his first major contract in 1723, printing a bi-weekly Jacobite newspaper which was soon censored. Having married in 1721, Richardson and his wife Martha Wilde suffered the loss of several sons before Martha succumbed to illness in 1732. Devastated, Richardson eventually remarried and focused on his career, earning a contract with the House of Commons in 1733 and hiring several apprentices to assist him at his shop. During this time, Richardson turned to fiction, publishing his first novel, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded in 1740, a work now considered the first modern novel. Throughout the remainder of his career, he published two more epistolary novels—Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753)—while continuing his work as a prominent and successful printer. He published and befriended many of the leading writers of his time, including Daniel Defoe, Sarah Fielding, and Samuel Johnson.

Reviews for Clarissa

[cecrow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My worst intellectual flaw is my poor memory. I have been reading all my life and can still tell you what I've read and haven't, but few details from any of it remain permanently lodged (thus the personal value of writing reviews). The plot of this 1,500 page novel is simple enough I'll retain that much, but the ocean of emotions, the flood of quotable bits, those are going to escape me. What I'll be able to hang onto is how it has made me feel: very, very full. Resuming my reading each time was, emotionally speaking, like plugging back into an electrical socket.Most impressive is that it was a memorable and fascinating experience even though not much actually happens for all the size of this behemoth. The ratio in length between the hugeness of this novel and a summary of its action is frankly ridiculous: the back cover of my edition managed it shamelessly in one short sentence. You'll benefit from knowing the overarching story in advance, but to avoid spoilers and only speak metaphorically: it is about the tempting of an angel by a devil, where the angel is reluctant to believe anyone is truly evil and the devil is convinced he can prove or make every angel a fallen creature. Although it could have been condensed to a fifth of its length or less, here is a case where sheer size lends a work its greatness. Small events are made momentous through being viewed and considered from every conceivable angle. These characters have an opinion to share on everything, and every position is brilliantly argued. Back-and-forth correspondence and the artfulness of rhetoric and self-deceptions won me over early on, convincing me to persevere and soon to enjoy. Suspense is often built on the back of nothing greater than wondering how someone will reply to some modest proposal or other, and yet I felt that suspense. Much of the driving thrust of most novels, 'what action happens next?', is replaced here with 'how will X possibly respond to Y?' or 'When will Y realize the deception of X?' Characters are written into corners and write their way back out brilliantly, over the course of 537 letters all told. There's nothing cold about this exercise; almost every letter tweaks the heart, be it to feel empathy and compassion, chuckle at a spot of humour, or experience outrage and demand justice.There is one problem towards the end: the exhortation by virtually everyone for Clarissa to get over herself and marry her rapist, as if that would be a happy ending. At least Clarissa herself wears something closer to our 21st century views, even if she can't frame it that way.Samuel Johnson, a contemporary of Samuel Richardson, said of this work "If you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." The good doctor has summarized my own sentiment perfectly.

[tess_w · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was an 18th century story of Clarissa Harlowe, a young girl, who rather than be forced by her family to marry a man she despises, is aided in running away by a real scoundrel. This book is written in epistolary form with Clarissa and her best friend, Miss Howe, being the primary letter writers. Miss Howe is a true friend to Clarissa throughout the very sad story. This was a very long book and began to drag in the middle when Clarissa and her friend constantly moralize on their fates; it's very repetitive. There are some parts that are unbelievable; such as when Clarissa is moved to a lodging, which in reality is a brothel (twice) and she has no idea. Maybe naivety is supposed to be part of the story line; but from the beginning one would not assume Clarissa to be naive. 1534 pages

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

An epistolary novel, one of the first, I believe. It is of astonishing sameness, but is a fine example of 1740's soft porn.

[tess_schoolmarm · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was an 18th century story of Clarissa Harlowe, a young girl, who rather than be forced by her family to marry a man she despises, is aided in running away by a real scoundrel. This book is written in epistolary form with Clarissa and her best friend, Miss Howe, being the primary letter writers. Miss Howe is a true friend to Clarissa throughout the very sad story. This was a very long book and began to drag in the middle when Clarissa and her friend constantly moralize on their fates; it's very repetitive. There are some parts that are unbelievable; such as when Clarissa is moved to a lodging, which in reality is a brothel (twice) and she has no idea. Maybe naivety is supposed to be part of the story line; but from the beginning one would not assume Clarissa to be naive. 1534 pages

[drfuriosa · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I AM FINISHED!!!! This book is both enormous and slow-moving and took me a month to get through.

It's also utterly aggravating to spend so much time with a selfish, spoiled man who gaslights a vulnerable and naive young woman who does not wish to be married off to acquire her family a bigger fortune. In short, there are 537 letters filled with stories of work and faintings, self-love, and much shaming of women.

The libertines in Samuel Richardson's novels are neither sympathetic nor commendable men, but at least Pamela's Mr. B. (called Booby by Henry Fielding, WHICH SO FITS) does kooky stunts, like cross-dressing as a maid, in order to grab Pamela's breast. Mr. Lovelace just gaslights Clarissa until the infamous rape scene, and OMG, it's too much like real life and sooooo exhausting.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was written as a collection of letters from the parties concerned. A playboy and a virtuous maiden. He is determined to conquer her and ingratiates himself upon her family who is looking for advancement in their social standing. She sees him for the devious corrupt man that he really is and desperately tries to avoid him. He is so charismatic that everyone seems to be against Clarissa. Kidnapping is involved. Can Clarissa maintain her virtue when the world is against her? A wonderful read.

[lkernagh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Volume 9 Summary: Love how Richardson wraps up this overly long story of his by recapping the various characters and their just rewards and providing the reader with a more fulsome explanation of a couple of the ladies of ill repute employed by Lovelace to corrupt Clarissa. Very happy to see some of the characters experiencing first hand what karma is all about.

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Let's be clear about this: this book is far, far too long for modern reading habits. Not all that much happens in its 1500 pages (pages which are, I would guess, maybe one and a half to twice as long as normal pages). If you want to read it, don't sit down and try to read the whole thing straight. It's really not that much fun. I heard somewhere that in the 18th century people treated books the way we treat TV programs: pick it up, put it down, come in in the middle, have a conversation while you're reading it etc... No need to read it through in a handful of sittings, pondering every last word.

That said, it's a pretty good story, and great for academics, of which I am one. This might be *the* novel of modernity. It's all here: issues of sexuality; issues of independence and autonomy; the odd relationship between the nobility and the newly arriving bourgeoisie; the role of religion in all of this; bizarre accounting practices (tell me again how many minutes a day Clarissa spent at her various tasks?) And it's a masterpiece in literary terms as well. Richardson's prose is lovely, and the main characters all have distinct voices and personalities; he plays around with his narrative in very interesting ways and stretches the epistolary novel to its bursting point. He is to epistolary novels as Wagner is to classical music. The difference is that people generally find what came after Wagner to be unlistenable, whereas what came after Richardson - especially from Austen forward - is far, far more readable and enjoyable.

Not sure why anyone would read this, though, unless they had an interest in literary history, or the type of personality which just wants to do the hardest thing out there. If you just want a good story about a virtuous young woman (no shame in that), I don't know, maybe try the BBC mini-series version.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Review: It says a lot that out of the 1499 pages of this novel, I only though the last 100 superfluous. If you like melodrama you will adore this novel. Completely comprised of letters between the characters, the minutiae of their psychological/spiritual motivations are enumerated beautifully. The characters are everything here. Clarissa, the virtuous maiden, Lovelace, the villain, and a host of both true-hearted and villainous minor players inhabit these pages. I absolutely loved this, with the exception that I think the ending was unnecessarily drawn out.

[kidsisyphus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this thing in its epistolary-entirety over the summer before learning that only sections of it were assigned. I think I got a bit more out of it than my classmates and was impressed by how the character of Lovelace overpowered Richardson.

[souloftherose · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

More than any other book I write about, I feel in no way qualified to give an opinion on Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. Where do I start? Firstly, this is a long novel. The Penguin Classics edition is 1,499 pages long. The font is very small and the pages are quite large. This reproduces Richardson's original version of Clarissa as first published in several volumes in 1747 and 1748. Richardson seemed to revise this original text quite heavily and some later editions have another 200 pages added. I think the free ebook versions use the longer, later texts but I'm not sure.Secondly, if you decide to read Clarissa you'll need to get rid of all our 21st century and 20th century ideas about what a novel is or should be. This book is long and, most of the time, nothing happens. Even when something does happen, you don't get to read about it happening: Clarissa is an epistolary novel (written in the form of letters) so you only get to read about events through the characters' letters after they've happened.Thirdly, do not attempt the Pearl rule* (or, if you do, you'll need to increase the Pearl rule by at least a factor of 10). I found it took me quite a long time to adapt to the style of writing and the pace and I struggled most in the first 500 pages. I found it really started to get going somewhere around the 700 page mark and the last 500 pages flew by. Perhaps the best thing to do is to quote Samuel Johnson who said Clarissa was 'the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart'. With all the books published in the 250+ years since Clarissa was first brought out I can see there could be some uncertainty about Clarissa still being the first book but I would definitely argue for it being in the top ten. The characters are not all pleasant, but they are all real and they all have different voices and styles in the letters they write. I think that must be difficult enough to do in what we think of as a normal length novel, surely it must be harder when you have to sustain this across almost 1,500 pages?Finally, I should note that Clarissa is not going to be a book for everyone (and that's ok). It's long and not much happens. Clarissa herself spends most of the novel in various unpleasant situations and that's difficult to read about - most of my struggles at the beginning of the novel were because it felt very emotionally claustrophobic. It is often described as boring and there is justification for that. I disagree (quite strongly I think) but I can understand why people find it boring. To quote Samuel Johnson again, 'if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself'. That's (thankfully) a bit of an exaggeration but there was a lot of frustration expressed on the group read thread.I felt rather uncertain about rating Clarissa. In the end I gave it 5 stars because it's so memorable - I'm sure the book and the characters will stay with me for a long time and also because on finishing it, I found myself thinking that this would really reward rereading (not going to happen soon though) and it's rare that I think that on finishing a book. I would definitely say I enjoyed my experience of reading Clarissa, although there were points when I struggled. I'm pleased and sad to have finished reading it and I don't think there's higher praise to give a novel than to say I felt sad to have no more left to read. Recommended, with caution.*The Pearl rule, courtesy of Nancy Pearl, says "If you still don't like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you're more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages."

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read Clarissa as part of the 75ers group read of the novel for 2012, and mostly kept to the plan of just reading each day's letters on that day (thus stretching the reading out pretty much over the course of the year). But i got a bit impatient at the end, and finished the last ninety pages or so at one go (so, from 15 September onward). That said, I'm glad I read the book this way, since I am fairly certain I wouldn't have made it very far had I just plunged in and tried to read it straight through.The plot is simple: virtuous young woman's family tries to force her into marriage with a most unpleasant chap; she rebels and gets suckered into running off with libertine Lovelace, whose main gain is seduction. That accomplished, Clarissa declines and ultimately dies. The story is told through letters, mainly but not exclusively between Clarissa and her friend Anna Howe and Lovelace and his friend John Belford. Not a whole lot happens for incredibly long stretches of time: months and hundreds of pages pass with Clarissa shut up in her room trying to get her family to quit trying to marry her off against her will, and then hundreds more pages as she lingers at death's door. Instances of anything much actually happening are few and far between. But, as Richardson points out in a postscript, these long stretches "are the foundation of the whole ... The letters and conversations, where the story makes the slowest progress, are presumed to be characteristic. They give occasion likewise to suggest many interesting personalities, in which a good deal of the instruction essential to a work of this nature is conveyed."Reading it as I did, a bit at a time, does much, as Richardson suggests, to "preserve and maintain that air of probability, which is necessary to be maintained in a story designed to represent real life; and which is rendered extremely busy and active by the plots and contrivances formed and carried on by one of the principal characters." If you do tackle it, I'd recommend trying it this way.It's interesting to watch some of the characters evolve over the course of the book through their letters, and the view of English society at the time is fascinating. It's certainly no easy slog to get through, though.

[janwillemnoldus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

French translation, much rewritten and thus sometimes practically a creation by Jules Janin

[labwriter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read the abridged version of this book in a literature class--for my English lit degree. I enjoyed the book. I find the reviews here to be hilarious. I liked the abridged version so much, that I bought the version with EVERY WORD that Richardson wrote. I haven't read it yet--I'm saving it for my old age, when I'm not able to drive. I'm really, really hoping that I don't go blind with macular degeneration when I'm in my 80s. If I don't, I'm sure I'll get this book read.

[literarysarah · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Dull dull dull. Knowing more or less how the story ends, I found that I couldn't wait for horrible things to happen to the preening, self-righteous Clarissa. Apart from the ghastly characters, the story also suffers from the indulgence of self-publishing. Richardson really could have used an editor to trim the book by at least half.

[beavermeyer · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I read the abridged version, and even that was too long for me. A long, epsitlary borefest with loathesome characters that ought to be lashed. I hated this book with a fiery passion. Just seeing this book makes me grit my teeth.

[puabi_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Somewhat claustrophobic. Try reading it in one sitting. (that was a joke) To be honest I haven't finished it yet, but I am looking to someday. I don't think it's as bad as the other reader said. Richardson's intent seems to be to immerse you in the emotional world of the story, and it works.

[wenestvedt_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Reportedly the longest fiction book in English, it's certainly among the heavist I own. Purchased for a course at Tufts on the 18th Century English Novel -- which was really a great class -- I found reading this book to be so dull that I could skip tens of pages at time and seemingly not advance a bit. I believe I wrote a long paper on casuistry (the professor's suggestion) based on this book, though I have no recollection of what I said, nor even what the word means. I get sleepy just looking at it, and intend to use it with my children as an object lesson in the need to edit onesself.