SOURCE: Uglow, Jenny. “Towards Fiction: The Champion and Shamela.” In Henry Fielding, pp. 28-33. Plymouth, U.K.: Northcote House, 1995.

In the following excerpt, Uglow offers a general reading of Shamela and notes the reader's collusion with the author in the novel's pretense.

Shamela was prompted by three books that had made Fielding's blood boil in 1740. The most important was Samuel Richardson's Pamela, in which, through her plangent, urgent letters home, we follow the young servant's brave attempts to foil the assaults on her virtue by her master, Mr B—, (including kidnapping, near-rape, and virtual imprisonment), until the final resolution in a happy marriage and handsome settlement. Fielding thought the novel an example of bad morality and (almost a worse sin) bad writing, and was outraged by its rapturous reception, especially by the clergy.

A second source of irritation was An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian...