Pamela, Volume One

by Samuel Richardson

Based on actual events, Pamela is the story of a young girl who goes to work in a private residence and finds herself pursued by her employer's son, described as a 'gentleman of free principles.' Unfolding through letters, the novel depicts with much feeling Pamela's struggles to decide how to respond to her would-be seducer and to determine her place in society.

Genres: Classics, 18th Century

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1901

About the author

Pamela (1740) and Clarissa Harlowe (1748) of English writer Samuel Richardson helped to legitimize the novel as a literary form in English.

An established printer and publisher for most of his life, Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. He is best known for his major 18th-century epistolary novel Sir Charles Grandison (1753).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_...

Reviews

[Paul Adkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Pamela is a very intense experience: at times profoundly boring, for the work (or this Volume 1 at least) is resolutely repetitious. The same situation, and the same arguments are thrust at us over and over again, with only the most subtle variations on the theme. However, this repetition could also be likened to a baroque fugue or canon. The same theme is worked and reworked, each scene folding into the others, over and over again until a most complex tapestry of obsession is woven indeed.
The interest in Pamela is the obsessive search for identity embedded within it.
An identity that Pamela searches for, like we all do, through her own narrative. But the narrative also involves her Master, and I think it is precisely the discovery of her writings about him that contributes to his own tremendous obsession with Pamela.
If Pamela had not been the chronicler of his primary infatuation for her, that obsession would probably have waned. But through Pamela's letters and journals, the Master is also thrown into a journey of discovering his own identity, described through Pamela's narration. His relationship with Pamela becomes an infatuation not to possess Pamela but to redirect the course of the narrative she develops about "him".
And this is interesting because it brings up a profound question about the role of literature itself.
To what extent is one's experience with literature about one's self-discovery through the works we read?

[Marta · Rating 2 out of 5]

No le pongo una estrella porque se intuye la fantasía pero perfectamente podría hacerlo si no fuese por las últimas 40 páginas.

[maisie grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

icl i hate this why does she marry mr b at the end? unacceptable and depressing. at least i cld write an essay on it