Letters and Passages Restored from the Original Manuscripts of the History of Clarissa, 1751, and: A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflections, Contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison, 1755 (review)

REVIEWS 597 Volume 2, Letters and Passages Restoredfrom the Original Manuscripts ofthe History of Clarissa, 1751. Introduction, Peter Sabor, Bibliographic Essay, O.M. Brack, xli + 324pp. Volume 3, A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflections, Contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison, 1 755. Introduction, John A. Dussinger, Afterword, Ann Jessie Van Sant. ? + 437pp. Peter Sabor's introduction to Richardson's Letters and Passages Restored (1751) [hereafter LAPR], intellectually rigorous and combative, is primarily a sustained argument to defend Richardson's main alterations of Clarissa in the second and third editions, which follows in the wake of Florian Stuber's introduction (also defensive) to the Clarissa Project's facsimile third edition itself. To some extent, this is the Clarissa Project's necessary line of self-justification, but, in both cases, I found the arguments generally persuasive. Part of Sabor's combative strategy entails using Mark Kinkead-Weekes as a whipping boy—perhaps excessively—because his classic article "Clarissa Restored ?" (1959) asserted that the changes in subsequent editions of Richardson's novel were not restorations but new passages inserted mainly to blacken Lovelace, reducing the subtleties of the novel. (I noted seven instances where his views were strongly repudiated, pp. ix, xi, xv, xvii, xix, xxvii, xxxii nl3—and one where we are told condescendingly that "even Kinkead-Weekes approves" of a particular revision, xxxv n46.) For Sabor's argument (subtitled "Above AU Fears of Prolixity ") is concerned with banishing once and for all the contention that Richardson's changes were all later accretions that had tendentious and didactic purposes. He points to evidence from Richardson's correspondence proving that several "restorations " were definitely in the pre-publication manuscript (which we do not have), even if the total percentage of them that fall into this category is unclear. Richardson , he argues, had simply eliminated them because he so very much feared the consequences ofhis enormous prolixity. To be sure, Saborconcedes that some "restorations ," such as Richardson's revisions regarding Clarissa's attitude towards her father's curse, where Richardson was explicitly responding to specific suggestions by his friends after the initial publication, can definitely be put in the other category . As with many of the documents in this set of three volumes, there is an ultimate indeterminacy—in this case in the precise proportions of genuine restorations to actual later changes. However, Sabor's position that Richardson restored passages simply to rectify former omissions perhaps paints too innocent a picture of the author. Sabor's other line ofdefence is to divide the alterations into several categories— the editorial notes, the dramatized expansion of summaries, and alterations modifying the characterizations of minor and major characters—and proceed to justify each one, on the whole successfully, in my opinion, though not always. In maintaining that those revisions affecting Clarissa's character are not monolithically whitewashing, he is absolutely right to point to one, with her self-recriminations, where "Nothing in William Warner's onslaught on the heroine in his Reading Clarissa exposes her shortcomings more fully" (p. xxvi). However, apart from the 598 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 12:4 admission that the added eulogy of Clarissa by Anna is "rébarbative" (p. xxvii), Sabor strains to vindicate Richardson totally where total vindication is not really necessary. For example, I find unconvincing his defence of the lengthy insertion of the history of the prostitutes, Polly Horton and Sally Martin. Dismissing charges that it is heavy-handed, he insists that they "are not set up as mere didactic ciphers. Each character is more fully developed and more sympathetic because we are given a fuller life" (p. xx). I disagree, finding the histories of these women all too similar to the didactic cautionary tales that Pamela tells her children at the end of part 2. Sally and Polly are presented as stereotypes of those conceited , spoiled, romantic girls who idle their time away in the activities Richardson so often chides—card-playing, novel-reading, and flirting at public amusements— used as anti-types or negative templates to the stilted model Clarissa constructed by Anna's eulogy. Far from being sympathetic, Richardson falls into "blaming the victim " mode, mercilessly...