Editing Samuel Richardson (section)

===Later career===
After the failures of the ''Pamela'' sequels, Richardson began to compose a new novel.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |73}} It was not until early 1744 that the content of the plot was known, and this happened when he sent [[Aaron Hill (writer)|Aaron Hill]] two chapters to read.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |73}} In particular, Richardson asked Hill if he could help shorten the chapters because Richardson was worried about the length of the novel.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |73}} Hill refused, saying,

{{blockquote |You have formed a style, as much your property as our respect for what you write is, where verbosity becomes a virtue; because, in pictures which you draw with such a skilful negligence, redundance but conveys resemblance; and to contract the strokes, would be to spoil the likeness.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |73–74}}}}

[[File:Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (title page).png|thumb|right|upright=1.2|Title page of ''Clarissa'']]
In July, Richardson sent Hill a complete "design" of the story, and asked Hill to try again, but Hill responded, "It is impossible, after the wonders you have shown in ''Pamela'', to question your infallible success in this new, natural, attempt" and that "you must give me leave to be astonished, when you tell me that you have finished it already".<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |74}} However, the novel was not complete to Richardson's satisfaction until October 1746.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |74}} Between 1744 and 1746, Richardson tried to find readers who could help him shorten the work, but his readers wanted to keep the work in its entirety.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |74}} A frustrated Richardson wrote to [[Edward Young]] in November 1747:

{{blockquote |What contentions, what disputes have I involved myself in with my poor Clarissa through my own diffidence, and for want of a will! I wish I had never consulted anybody but Dr. Young, who so kindly vouchsafed me his ear, and sometimes his opinion.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |75}}}}

Richardson did not devote all of his time just to working on his new novel, but was busy printing various works for other authors that he knew.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |77}} In 1742, he printed the third edition of [[Daniel Defoe]]'s ''Tour through Great Britain''. He filled his few further years with smaller works for his friends until 1748, when Richardson started helping [[Sarah Fielding]] and her friend [[Jane Collier]] to write novels.<ref>{{Citation |last= Collier |title = Letter to Richardson |date = 4 October 1748}}.</ref><ref name="Sabor">{{Citation |title=Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Sarah Fielding |last=Sabor}}.</ref>{{rp |150}} By 1748, Richardson was so impressed with Collier that he accepted her as the governess to his daughters.<ref name="Rizzo">{{Citation |title=Companions Without Vows.... |last=Rizzo}}.</ref>{{rp |45}} In 1753, she wrote ''[[An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting]]'' with the help of Sarah Fielding and possibly James Harris or Richardson,<ref name="Rizzo"/>{{rp |46}} and it was Richardson who printed the work.<ref name="Sabor"/>{{rp |151}} But Collier was not the only author to be helped by Richardson, as he printed an edition of Young's ''Night Thoughts'' in 1749.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |77}}

By 1748 his novel ''Clarissa'' was published in full: two volumes appeared in November 1747, two in April 1748, and three in December 1748.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |83}} Unlike the novel, the author was not faring well at this time.<ref name= "Dobson"/>{{rp |82}} By August 1748, Richardson was in poor health.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |81}} He had a sparse diet that consisted mostly of vegetables and drinking vast amounts of water, and was not robust enough to prevent the effects of being bled upon the advice of various doctors throughout his life.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |81}} He was known for "vague 'startings' and 'paroxysms'", along with experiencing tremors.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |82}} Richardson once wrote to a friend that "my nervous disorders will permit me to write with more impunity than to read" and that writing allowed him a "freedom he could find nowhere else".<ref name="Flynn"/>{{rp |287}}

[[File:Samuel Richardson by Mason Chamberlin.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.15|Portrait of Richardson from the 1750s by [[Mason Chamberlin]]]]
However, his condition did not stop him from continuing to release the final volumes ''Clarissa'' after November 1748.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |83}} To Hill he wrote: "The Whole will make Seven; that is, one more to attend these two. Eight crouded into Seven, by a smaller Type. Ashamed as I am of the Prolixity, I thought I owed the Public Eight Vols. in Quantity for the Price of Seven".<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |83}} Richardson later made it up to the public with "deferred Restorations" of the fourth edition of the novel being printed in larger print with eight volumes and a preface that reads: "It is proper to observe with regard to the ''present Edition'' that it has been thought fit to restore many Passages, and several Letters which were omitted in the former merely for shortening-sake."<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |83}}

The response to the novel was positive, and the public began to describe the title heroine as "divine Clarissa".<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |86}} It was soon considered Richardson's "masterpiece", his greatest work,<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |94}} and was rapidly translated into French<ref>{{Citation |last=Krake |title=He could go no farther}}.</ref><ref>Greene.</ref> in part or in full, for instance by the abbé [[Antoine François Prévost]], as well as into German.<ref>Krake, ''How art produces art''.</ref> The Dutch translator of ''Clarissa'' was the distinguished Mennonite preacher, Johannes Stinstra (1708–1790), who as a champion of [[Socinianism]] had been suspended from the ministry in 1742. This gave him sufficient leisure to translate ''Clarissa'', which was published in eight volumes between 1752–1755. However, Stinstra later wrote in a letter to Richardson of 24 December 1753 that the translation had been "a burden too heavy for [his] shoulders".<ref>''The Spiritual Side of Samuel Richardson, Mysticism, Behmenism and Millenarianism in an Eighteenth-Century English Novelist'', Gerda J. Joling-van der Sar, 2003, pp. 12–13.</ref> In England there was particular emphasis on Richardson's "natural creativity" and his ability to incorporate daily life experience into the novel.<ref name="Flynn"/>{{rp |286}} However, the final three volumes were delayed, and many of the readers began to "anticipate" the concluding story and some demanded that Richardson write a happy ending.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |95–96}} One such advocate of the happy ending was Henry Fielding, who had previously written ''Joseph Andrews'' to mock Richardson's ''Pamela''.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |96}} Although Fielding was originally opposed to Richardson, Fielding supported the original volumes of ''Clarissa'' and thought a happy ending would be "poetical justice".<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |96}} Those who disagreed included the [[Sussex]] diarist Thomas Turner, writing in about July 1754: "''Clarissa Harlow'' [sic], I look upon as a very well-wrote thing, tho' it must be allowed it is too prolix. The author keeps up the character of every person in all places; and as to the maner [sic] of its ending, I like it better than if it had terminated in more happy consequences."<ref>Thomas Turner: ''The Diary of a Georgian Shopkeeper'', 2nd e., ed. G. H. Jennings (Oxford etc.: OUP, 1979), p. 2.</ref>

Others wanted Lovelace to be reformed and for him and Clarissa to marry, but Richardson would not allow a "reformed rake" to be her husband, and was unwilling to change the ending.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |97}} In a postscript to ''Clarissa'', Richardson wrote:

{{blockquote |if the temporary sufferings of the Virtuous and the Good can be accounted for and justified on Pagan principles, many more and infinitely stronger reasons will occur to a Christian Reader in behalf of what are called unhappy Catastrophes, from a consideration of the doctrine of ''future rewards''; which is every where strongly enforced in the History of Clarissa.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |99}}}}

Although few were bothered by the epistolary style, Richardson feels obliged to continue his postscript with a defence of the form based on the success of it in ''Pamela''.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |99}}

[[File:History of Charles Grandison.png|thumb|right|upright=1.2|Title page of ''Grandison'']]
However, some did question the propriety of having Lovelace, the villain of the novel, act in such an immoral fashion.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |101}} The novel avoids glorifying Lovelace, as Carol Flynn puts it,

{{blockquote |by damning his character with monitory footnotes and authorial intrusions, Richardson was free to develop in his fiction his villain's fantasy world. Schemes of mass rape would be legitimate as long as Richardson emphasized the negative aspects of his character at the same time.<ref name="Flynn"/>{{rp |230}}}}

But Richardson still felt the need to respond by writing a pamphlet called ''Answer to the Letter of a Very Reverend and Worthy Gentleman''.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |10}} In the pamphlet, he defends his characterizations and explains that he took great pains to avoid any glorification of scandalous behaviour, unlike the authors of many other novels that rely on characters of such low quality.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |101}}

In 1749, Richardson's female friends started asking him to create a male figure as virtuous as his heroines "Pamela" and "Clarissa" in order to "give the world his idea of a good man and fine gentleman combined".<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |141–142}} Although he did not at first agree, he eventually complied, starting work on a book in this vein in June 1750.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |142}} Near the end of 1751, Richardson sent a draft of the novel ''[[The History of Sir Charles Grandison]]'' to Mrs. Donnellan, and the novel was being finalized in the middle of 1752.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |144}} When the novel was being printed in 1753, Richardson discovered that Irish printers were trying to pirate the work.<ref name = "Sale"/>{{rp |26}} He immediately fired those he suspected of giving the printers advanced copies of ''Grandison'' and relied on multiple London printing firms to help him produce an authentic edition before the pirated version was sold.<ref name ="Sale"/>{{rp |26}} The first four volumes were published on 13 November 1753, and in December the next two would follow.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |145}} The remaining volume was published in March to complete a seven-volume series while a six-volume set was simultaneously published, and these met with success.<ref name="Dobson"/>{{rp |146}} In ''Grandison'', Richardson was unwilling to risk having a negative response to any "rakish" characteristics that Lovelace embodied, and denigrated the immoral characters "to show those mischievous young admirers of Lovelace once and for all that the rake should be avoided".<ref name="Flynn"/>{{rp |231}}