Clarissa or The History of a Young Lady

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Clarissa or The History of a Young Lady

In the Johnson age there are many popular writers. One of these authors is Samuel Richardson, who was a novelist. His most popular novels were Pamela and Clarissa, which are both constructed of a series of letters. Clarissa, however, was regarded as one of his most popular European novels. "His masterpiece, Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady, one of the greatest European novels, was published in 1747-8" (Richardson, 1).

When Richardson wrote Clarissa his intention was to write a novel of a series of letters that were written by an unskilled author. This book contains 537 letters written by various characters in the novel. Because the book is so long I could not read the whole thing nor have I ever read it before. As a result I can not say a lot about it. Because I find it is a little hard to read I was not able to read as much as I would have like to in the four hours that we were to set aside to read the book. I did, however, manage to read the first eight letters in the novel. The first letter was written to Clarissa Harlowe from her good friend Anna Howe. This letter is used to introduce the reader to the problems that have been going on in the Harlowe home that lead to Clarissa being the topic of gossip.

The letters that follow this one are from Clarissa to Anna and they explain what had happened. The trouble begins when Mr. Lovelace begins to visit the Harlowe home; it is believed that he is there to court the eldest daughter. However, this does not work out and he then decides the he would like to date the younger daughter, who is Clarissa. This is not well liked by her brother because Mr. Lovelace was his enemy all through college and there is now a grudge between the two. As a result, Clarissa's brother and Mr. Lovelace get into a fight and Clarissa's brother is injured. It is because of this that no one else in the family cares for him anymore either. However, this does not stop him from pursuing Clarissa.

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