Pamela

Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded--------------------------------------------------Pamela under the Notion of being a Virtuous Modest Girl will be introducedinto all Familes,and when she gets there, what Scenes does she represent?Why a fine young Gentleman endeavouring to debauch a beautiful youngGirl of Sixteen.' (Pamela Censured, 1741) One of the most spectacularsuccesses of the burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteeent-centuryLondon, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of themodern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world'into two different Parties, Pamelists and Antipamelists', even eclipsingthe sensational factional politics of the day. Preached up for itsmorality, and denounced as pornography in disguise, it vividly describesa young servant's long resistance to the attempts of her predatorymaster to seduce her. Written in the voice of its low-born heroine,but by a printer who fifteen years earlier had narrowly escaped imprisonmentfor the seditious output of his press, Pamela is not only a work ofpioneering psychological complexity, but also a compelling and provocativestudy of power and its abuse.Based on the original text of 1740, fromwhich Richardson later retreated in a series of defensive revisions,this edition makes available the version of Pamela that aroused suchwidespread controversy on its first appearance.