SOURCE: "Horrid Romancing: Richardson's Use of the Fairy Tale," in Samuel Richardson: A Man of Letters, Princeton University Press, 1982, pp. 145-95.

In the following excerpt, Flynn discusses how Richardson uses elements of the fairy tale in creating a fantastic world and contends that—through editorial power and attention to minutiae—he positions readers to accept the extraordinary as normal.

Was ever the like heard? … But this, to be sure, is horrid romancing!

Pamela (I, 243-44) [I, 156]

In their study of fairy tales, lona and Peter Opie include among their illustrations one of Joseph Highmore's portraits of Pamela.¹ Pamela is telling a nursery tale to a pensive-looking Miss Godwin, five of the B. cherubs, and the nursery maid, "delightedly pursuing some useful Needlework, for the dear Charmers of my Heart." They wait, "all as hush and as still, as Silence itself," for moral allegories about the two good little...