The complete online text of Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 3 by Samuel Richardson.

The English novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) brought dramatic intensity and psychological insight to the epistolary novel. Fiction, including the novel told in letters, had become popular in England before Samuel Richardson's time, but he was the f...

Samuel Richardson, often in his own time compared to Shakespeare for universality, originality, and emotional truth, is generally acknowledged as the founder of a new school of novel writing in England. The new novel had its origins partly in English dom...

Samuel Richardson, often in his own time compared to Shakespeare for universality, originality, and emotional truth, is generally acknowledged as the founder of a new school of novel writing in England. The new novel had its origins partly in English dom...

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida. Ecco, 226 pages, $23.95. The impulse to lump these two novels together is understandable, since Heidi Julavits and Vendela Vida are co-founders of The Believer (a literary journal I’ve written for—just once.) But there’s...

Introduce Yourself Julie Paolucci, a mom of five in Newington, Connecticut, sends a note of introduction to each of her children’s teachers. “I include relevant family information and anything specific the teacher needs to know about my child,” says Julie. Keep in Touch “I really...

Clarissa Dalrymple "Next year, in 2007, I think it's like the year of the suicide—the art world commits suicide," said Vasif Kortun. "It starts with Moscow, and then there's the Emirates, and then there's Venice, then in Istanbul; there's Documenta, there is Muenster Sculpture Projects—there's...

A man convicted of raping three boys when he was 13 years old has been hanged despite a chief justice's order that the case be reviewed, the his lawyer and a U.S. rights group said Thursday.Makwan Moloudzadeh was executed late Tuesday and his family told...

Below, Warner explores Richardson's sometimes counterproductive attempts at asserting authorial control over the readers of Clarissa.

In the following essay, Wehr argues that deconstructionist interpretations of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa miss the ways the author uses irony to impose a single, moralizing narrative judgment on the story's characters and actions.

In the following excerpt, Bueler describes various plotcombining techniques used in Clarissa, including the sharing of characters and events throughout the novel's three plots, and the use of dramatic elements in letters exchanged between characters.