SOURCE: Baker, Sheridan. Introduction to An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, pp. xi-xxxvi. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953.

In the following excerpt, Baker discusses Fielding's authorship of Shamela, the novel's thematic concerns, and its relationship to Pamela.

Shamela is not only a little book of great historical interest; it is not only a work which turned Henry Fielding from a minor dramatist and journalist into a major novelist: it is itself a masterpiece. It may well be the best parody in English literature.

In the history of the novel, Shamela holds a highly distinguished place, standing as it does between the two books which are alternately taken to be the first modern English novel: between Richardson's Pamela and Fielding's Joseph Andrews. The history of the modern novel may conveniently be said to begin when Richardson anonymously published his Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded...