The Work(s) of Samuel Richardson (review)

366 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 11:3 be her retirement, a place into which he must never intrude. The dining room is designated the only common ground, the only room in which they may meet to discuss ... theirrelationship. It is not surprising, then, that the dining roombecomes the scene ofmost ofthis couple's contentions, and that absence from meals should immediately assume symbolic importance" (p. 72). Frega's best interpretations, like those of a good psychoanalyst, turn on Richardson's wonderful and endless minutiae, and in this she is surely faithful to the demands of the text. Karen Valihora York University Stephanie Fysh. The Work(s) ofSamuel Richardson. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1998. 156pp. US$29.50. ISBN 0-87413-626-1. By concentrating on the reality and materiality of Richardson's works and thus presenting a revisionist reading of the author, Stephanie Fysh aims in her study at overcoming the dichotomy traditionally set up between Richardson the novelist and Richardson the printer: "This book proposes that we need not follow Richardson's example of separation, but can choose instead his example of bringing together the textual and the technological, the creative and the everyday, realms ofleisure and realms ofwork, fictions and realities" (p. 7). Fysh is idiosyncratic in her approach and choice of subjects: for instance, she puts an emphasis on a lesser-known work such as The Apprentice 's Vade Mecum, on the fan material of Pamela rather than the novel itself, on a small but significant detail such as Paper X of Clarissa, and on the connection between the function of property and copyright law in Sir Charles Grandison. The result is an original and refreshing contribution to scholarship. A chapter on theoretical considerations and an overview of the aspect of technology as intermittently emerging in Richardson studies are followed by four chapters, each of which concentrates on one particular work ofthe English author. Fysh examines The Apprentice 's Vade Mecum as "a physical and symbolic document constructed and mediated by the labor processes and practices involved in its production, and in its turn constructing and mediating those processes and practices " (p. 28) and comes to the conclusion that itrepresents amanual ofconduct and morality and a book in which Richardson, as author and printer, completely controls the text. Her investigation ofthe author's labour practices in his own printing house furthermore draws attention to the fact that Richardson's need for control extended into the strict rule of his apprentices' lives. The paternalism on the part ofthe printer which emerged in his role as master also comes to the fore in the Vade Mecum, which constitutes, in its emphasis on familial relations and the necessity ofmoral conduct, "a prelude to Richardson's canonical work as a novelist" (p. 56). Fysh's subsequent chapter on Pamela deals with the cultural manifestations and uses of that novel, such as anecdotes, a waxworks exhibition, two Vauxhall REVIEWS 367 paintings, and a fan. By "extending the boundaries of the 'text' of Pamela ... reexamining it as a work, as a cultural artifact that includes many material texts and even nontextual artifacts" (p. 58), Fysh's objective is to come to a better understanding of its meaning and to arrive at the social function of its offshoots. Through both her approach to and her interest in this non-literary aspect ofa novel she manages to unearth fascinating new material. In her investigation of Clarissa, Fysh returns to the theme of a printer's control overhis text. She analyses the varying typographicalrenditions ofPaper X and, in a survey of the positions ofrecent literary critics, draws attention to possibly flawed readings. Her main contribution to scholarship in this chapter is the evidence she collects on the considerable control Richardson exerted as his own printer over his work, and thus again emphasizes an aspect hitherto neglected in literary criticism. Taking as a starting point the pamphlet war over the publication of Sir Charles Grandison, Fysh shows that Richardson's last novel "demonstrates an intersection of various meanings and conceptions of 'property' in the mid-eighteenth century: ofliterary and theoretical property; ofthoughts on gardens, estate management , and houses; and of women as property" (p. 100). She...