SOURCE: "Representing Reality: Strategies of Realism in the Early English Novel," in Eighteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 6, No. 2, January, 1994, pp. 121-40.

In the following excerpt, Bond analyzes realist techniques in the early novel, especially the work of Richardson.

Some's fiction and some's not, and you can't be sure I wanted that feeling of when you're lying, people think you're telling the truth.¹

Ken Kesey

Alexander Pope read Samuel Richardson's Pamela "with great Approbation and Pleasure," and, according to Dr George Cheyne, commented that "it will do more good than a great many of the new Sermons."² However we read this comment, and I believe there are several layers of irony, Pope enjoyed the book well enough to make sure his appreciation and his understanding of it as a work of practical morality were forwarded to its author. His linking Pamela to the sermon would have won Richardson's gratitude, by...