Samuel Richardson is among the most unlikely masters of English literature. He was born in 1688 in London and apprenticed to a printer at the age of 17. He worked hard, married his master’s daughter, and eventually became head of the printing house. In time he was made Printer of the Journals of the House of Commons. Richardson did not write imaginatively until the age of 50. While composing a book of model letters for semiliterate people, he heard the story of a servant who married her aristocratic employer; the conjunction of these two factors seems to have inspired Pamela. The novel was published to great acclaim in 1740 and the aging printer found himself with a new career: novelist. Pamela was followed by the sequel Pamela in Her Exalted Condition (1741) and by Clarissa (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753). While Clarissa is designated as Richardson’s masterpiece, Pamela has achieved distinction as the work that created the modern English novel.
The rise of literacy. Somewhat unusually for a servant girl of the time, Pamela is both literate and well-read in Richardson’s novel.
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