SOURCE: Introduction to Letters From the Marchioness de M*** to the Count de R***, by Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon fils, Garland Publishing, 1972, pp. 5-10.

In the following introduction to a modern edition of Crébillon's novel, Grieder points out that the epistolary novel did not originate with Samuel Richardson in England, and explains how Crébillon's work uses the genre's strengths to build up sympathy for an amoral woman.

The reader acquainted with the epistolary novel only through Pamela, Clarissa, or Sir Charles Grandison may be tempted to assume that the form sprang full blown like Athena from the brow of Samuel Richardson. Such is not the case, as Robert Adams Day thoroughly demonstrates in Told in Letters; and the Letters from the Marchioness de M*** to the Count de R*** (1735) by Crébillon fils is a good example of an earlier effort in the genre...