Editing Samuel Richardson (section)

===Early career===
The elder Richardson originally wanted his son to become a clergyman, but he was not able to afford the education that the younger Richardson would require, so he let his son pick his own profession.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |7}} He selected the profession of printing because he hoped to "gratify a thirst for reading, which, in after years, he disclaimed".<ref name= "Dobson"/>{{rp |7}} At the age of 17, in 1706, Richardson was bound in seven-year apprenticeship under John Wilde as a printer. Wilde's printing shop was in Golden Lion Court on Aldersgate Street, and Wilde had a reputation as "a master who grudged every hour... that tended not to his profit".<ref name="Sale">{{Citation |title=Samuel Richardson: Master Printer |last = Sale}}.</ref>{{rp |7}}

{{quote box
|width=40%
|quote=I served a diligent seven years to it; to a master who grudged every hour to me that tended not to his profit, even of those times of leisure and diversion, which the refractoriness of my fellow-servants ''obliged'' him to allow them, and were usually allowed by other masters to their apprentices. I stole from the hours of rest and relaxation, my reading times for improvement of my mind; and, being engaged in correspondence with a gentleman, greatly my superior in degree, and of ample fortune, who, had he lived, intended high things for me; these were all the opportunities I had in my apprenticeship to carry it on. But this little incident I may mention; I took care that even my candle was of my own purchasing, that I might not, in the most trifling instance, make my master a sufferer (and who used to call me the pillar of his house) and not to disable myself by watching or sitting-up, to perform my duty to him in the day time.
|source= – Samuel Richardson on his time with John Wilde.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |8–9}}}}

While working for Wilde, he met a rich gentleman who took an interest in Richardson's writing abilities and the two began to correspond with each other. When the gentleman died a few years later, Richardson lost a potential patron, which delayed his ability to pursue his own writing career. He decided to devote himself completely to his apprenticeship, and he worked his way up to a position as a compositor and a corrector of the shop's printing press.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |9}} In 1713, Richardson left Wilde to become "Overseer and Corrector of a Printing-Office".<ref name= "Sale"/>{{rp |7}} This meant that Richardson ran his own shop, but the location of that shop is unknown.<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |7}} It is possible that the shop was located in Staining Lane or may have been jointly run with John Leake in Jewin Street.<ref name= "Sale"/>{{rp |8}}

In 1719, Richardson was able to take his freedom from being an apprentice and was soon able to afford to set up his own printing shop, which he did after he moved near the Salisbury Court district close to Fleet Street.<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |8}} Although he claimed to business associates that he was working out of the well-known Salisbury Court, his printing shop was more accurately located on the corner of Blue Ball Court and Dorset Street in a house that later became Bell's Building.<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |8}} On 23 November 1721, Richardson married Martha Wilde, the daughter of his former employer. The match was "prompted mainly by prudential considerations", although Richardson would claim later that there was a strong love-affair between Martha and him.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |10}} He soon brought her to live with him in the printing shop that served also as his home.<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |9}}

A key moment in Richardson's career came on 6 August 1722 when he took on his first apprentices: Thomas Gover, George Mitchell, and Joseph Chrichley.<ref name = "Sale"/>{{rp |15}} He would later take on William Price (2 May 1727), Samuel Jolley (5 September 1727), Bethell Wellington (2 September 1729), and Halhed Garland (5 May 1730).<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |351}}

One of Richardson's first major printing contracts came in June 1723 when he began to print the bi-weekly ''The True Briton'' for [[Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton]]. This was a Jacobite political paper which attacked the government and was soon censored for printing "common libels". However, Richardson's name was not on the publication, and he was able to escape any of the negative fallout, although it is possible that Richardson participated in the papers as far as actually writing one himself.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |12}} The only lasting effect from the paper would be the incorporation of Wharton's libertine characteristics in the character of Lovelace in Richardson's ''Clarissa'', although Wharton would be only one of many models of libertine behaviour that Richardson would find in his life.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |13}} In 1724, Richardson befriended Thomas Gent, Henry Woodfall, and [[Arthur Onslow]], the latter of those would become the [[Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom)|Speaker of the House of Commons]].<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |14}}

Over their ten years of marriage, the Richardsons had five sons and one daughter – three of the boys were successively named Samuel after their father, but all three died young. Soon after the death of William, their fourth child, Martha died on 25 January 1731. Their youngest son, Samuel, was to live past his mother for a year longer, but succumbed to illness in 1732. After his final son died, Richardson attempted to move on with his life. He married Elizabeth Leake, whose father was a printer,<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.bl.uk/people/samuel-richardson | title=British Library }}</ref> and the two moved into another house on Blue Ball Court. However, Elizabeth and his daughter were not the only ones living with him because Richardson allowed five of his apprentices to lodge in his home.<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |11}} Elizabeth had six children (five daughters and one son) with Richardson; four of their daughters, Mary, Martha, Anne, and Sarah, reached adulthood and survived their father.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |15}} Their son, another Samuel, was born in 1739 and died in 1740.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |15}}

[[File:Samuel Richardson by Joseph Highmore (2).jpg|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Samuel Richardson by [[Joseph Highmore]]. [[National Portrait Gallery, London|National Portrait Gallery]], [[Westminster]], England.]]

In 1733, Richardson was granted a contract with the [[House of Commons of Great Britain|House of Commons]], with help from Onslow, to print the ''Journals of the House''.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |14}} The 26 volumes of the work soon improved his business.<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |11}} Later in 1733, he wrote ''The Apprentice's Vade Mecum'', urging young men like himself to be diligent and self-denying.<ref name="Flynn">{{Citation |title=Samuel Richardson: A Man of Letters |last=Flynn}}.</ref>{{rp |6}} The work was intended to "create the perfect apprentice".<ref name="Flynn"/>{{rp |6}} Written in response to the "epidemick Evils of the present Age", the text is best known for its condemnation of popular forms of entertainment including theatres, taverns and gambling.<ref name="Flynn"/>{{rp |7}} The manual targets the apprentice as the focal point for the moral improvement of society, not because he is most susceptible to vice, but because, Richardson suggests, he is more responsive to moral improvement than his social betters.<ref name="Flynn"/>{{rp |8}} During this time, Richardson took on five more apprentices: Thomas Verren (1 August 1732), Richard Smith (6 February 1733), Matthew Stimson (7 August 1733), Bethell Wellington (7 May 1734), and Daniel Green (1 October 1734).<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |351}} His total staff during the 1730s numbered seven, as his first three apprentices were free by 1728, and two of his apprentices, Verren and Smith, died soon into their apprenticeship.<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |351}} The loss of Verren was particularly devastating to Richardson because Verren was his nephew and his hope for a male heir that would take over the press.<ref name="Sale"/>{{rp |18}}