SOURCE: Jensen, Gerard E. “An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, 1741.” Modern Language Notes 31, no. 5 (May 1916): 310-11.

In the following essay, Jensen provides textual evidence to show that Shamela was written by Fielding.

In his Samuel Richardson (Eng. Men of Letters, 1902) Mr. Austin Dobson discusses the authorship of the above parody on Richardson's Pamela, but does not decide the question for us. The evidence that he brings forward seems to support Miss Thomson's conjecture (Samuel Richardson, London, 1900, p. 38) that it is not improbable that Henry Fielding wrote this pamphlet. In a recent examination of a copy in the possession of the Yale Library, I have found further evidence to support such a conjecture; and I am now tempted to state positively that Shamela is the work of Fielding.

There is in Fielding's prose a peculiarity of word-usage that affords a mechanical test for his style, and...