Samuel Richardson's account of a servant girl's defence of her virtue against the advances of her lascivious master ('Mr B'), given in her own letters, made what we now call 'the Novel' (though Richardson never attached this label to his book) respectable. Pamela caused an unprecedented stir, exciting something like a national argument about the purposes and value of fiction. It was the model for a new literature, whose influence we still feel.

LRB 12 December 2002 | PDF Download