Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson was born in 1689 in Derbyshire, England, the son of a joiner. He became a successful London printer before turning to fiction in his fifties, when he was commissioned to write a book of model letters for semi-literate readers. This project inspired him to write Pamela (1740), an epistolary novel about a servant girl's virtue, which became a sensation and effectively launched the modern English novel. Clarissa followed in 1747-48, published in seven volumes, and cemented his reputation as the age's preeminent novelist. This author hub collects 2 works in the Canon Compass ranking, led by Clarissa.