SOURCE: "From Pamela to Grandison: Richardson's Moral Revolution in the Novel," in Studies in Change and Revolution: Aspects of English Intellectual History 1640-1800, edited by Paul J. Korshin, Scholar Press, 1972, pp. 191-210.

In the following essay, Guilhamet contends that undue emphasis has been placed on Richardson's realism. He suggests that, instead, the proper focus should be on the novelist's moral ideals.

I

It is remarkable how little we know about the work of Samuel Richardson. Of substantial influence during his own time, not only in England but on the Continent and in America, Richardson has continued to suffer from the attacks originated by Fielding and by a persistent inability on the part of later critics to take his work seriously. As Arnold Kettle writes in his Introduction to the English Novel: "No considerable writer in our language is so easily made fun of as Richardson."¹

To rectify the...