SOURCE: Watt, Ian. “Shamela.” In Fielding: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Ronald Paulson, pp. 45-51. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1962.

In the following essay, originally published in 1956, Watt discusses the major theme of faith versus good works and analyzes Fielding's brand of satire.

Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded was published on November 6th, 1740. It immediately became the sensation of the literary season, and a swarm of attacks, parodies, and spurious continuations soon appeared to sour Richardson's remarkable and unexpected triumph; of these the first and easily the best was the eighteen-penny pamphlet An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, published on April 4th, 1741, under the name of Mr. Conny Keyber.

That Fielding was the author is indisputable. Horace Walpole and several other contemporaries privately recorded it as his in terms that do not suggest that there was any doubt about the matter; and in...