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PAMELA
OR
VIRTUE REWARDED
by Samuel Richardson
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
Samuel Richardson, the first, in order of time, of the great English
novelists, was born in 1689 and died at London in 1761. He was a printer
by trade, and rose to be master of the Stationers' Company. That he also
became a novelist was due to his skill as a letter-writer, which brought
him, in his fiftieth year, a commission to write a volume of model
"familiar letters" as an aid to persons too illiterate to compose their
own. The notion of connecting these letters by a story which had
interested him suggested the plot of "Pamela" and determined its
epistolary form--a form which was retained in his later works.
This novel (published 1740) created an epoch in the history of English
fiction, and, with its successors, exerted a wide influence upon
Continental literature. It is appropriately included in a series which
is designed to form a group of studies of English life by the masters of
English fiction. For it marked the transition from the novel of
adventure to the novel of character--from the narration of entertaining
events to the study of men and of manners, of motives and of sentiments.
In it the romantic interest of the story (which is of the slightest) is
subordinated to the moral interest in the conduct of its characters in
the various situations in which they are placed. Upon this aspect of the
"drama of human life" Richardson cast a most observant, if not always a
penetrating glance. His works are an almost microscopically detailed
picture of English domestic life in the early part of the eighteenth
century.
PAMELA;
OR,
VIRTUE REWARDED
LETTER I
DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,
I have great trouble, and some comfort, to acquaint you with. The
trouble is, that my good lady died of the illness I mentioned to you, and
left us all much grieved for the loss of her; for she was a dear good
lady, and kind to all us her servants. Much I feared, that as I was
taken by her ladyship to wait upon her person, I should be quite
destitute again, and forced to return to you and my poor mother, who have
enough to do to maintain yourselves; and, as my lady's goodness had put
me to write and cast accounts, and made me a little expert at my needle,
and otherwise qualified above my degree, it was not every family that
could have found a place that your poor Pamela was fit for: but God,
whose graciousness to us we have so often experienced at a pinch, put it
into my good lady's heart, on her death-bed, just an hour before she
expired, to recommend to my young master all her servants, one by one;
and when it came to my turn to be recommended, (for I was sobbing and
crying at her pillow) she could only say, My dear son!--and so broke off
a little; and then recovering--Remember my poor Pamela--And these were
some of her last words! O how my eyes run--Don't wonder to see the paper
so blotted.
Well, but God's will must be done!--And so comes the comfort, that I
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