Richardson’s letters

RICHARDSON'S LElTERS· In the last few de<:ades a good many scholars, following Richardson's own example, have declared their intention of filling up one of the larger gaps in eighteenth-century literary scholarship by producing a full edition of Richardson's correspondence. None has yet appeared, and, one sunnises, for two main reasons. First, the mere scale of the project would be enough to daunt almost any editor or publisher, since a complete correspondence would certainly come to much more than twice the six volumes of the only edition yet undertaken-Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Correspontknce of Samuel Richardson . This appeared in 1804 and printed less than half of the very large collection of original letters and copies which Richardson himself had made, and which was eventnally purchased by the publisher, Richard Phillips from the estate of Richardson's daughter, Anne, after her death in 1803. Most of this original collection has survived, and a great many other letters have subsequently come to light. But in addition to the vast scale of a complete scholarly edition, there is a second discouraging factor: Richardson's letters lack variety; the subje<:ts, the personality, the style, and the general purport-all are rather uniform. As regards subje<:t, very few letters survive hom the period before the publication of Pamela in 1740, and so Richardson's extant letters are very largely concerned with the writing and reception of his novels. The personality which the letters exhibit is one where a continual craving for emotional intimacy seems always to be submerged in an even more obsessive concern with self-jnstification: if a correspondent answers Richardson's plea for criticism, the justice of his objections is never directly admitted; perhaps a contrary, cancelling objection is cited; and if by any chance Richardson does concede a point, he soon takes it back, usually with compound interest. As for the literary style of the letters, it is very similar to that in the novels: Richardson's sentences are characteristically dominated by nouns rather than verbs, and by nouns endlessly qualified in cumulated parentheses and absolute constructions. One could say that the style is oral, but only in the sense that one imagines Richardson as talking like a heavily umevised book, if the concept he admissible. It is not that Richardson fails to live up to his own precepts as a letter writer-to "write whatever, at the moment, comes uppermost, trusting to [my1heart, and regarding not head"; but rather that his was a very closely guarded heart, and its deepest urge seems to have been to try to catch the hearts of others off-guard. However, an excellent paper by Professor Malvin Zirker on the connection between Richardson as letter-writer and as novelist is about to appear; so this review must limit itself to welcoming the present attractive selection of Richardson's letters, ably edited by Professor John Carroll. The volume "Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson, edited with an introduction by John Carroll. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. Pp. x, 350. $7.00. Volume xxxv, Number 2, January, 1966 212 IAN WATt contains 128 letters by Ri&arclson, -of which 54-have never been printed before, except some in extracts; and many of the others are given in morc complete or more accurate versions than have previously been available. The value of the selection can be illustrated by a few random examples. In the case of one of the most.interesting correspondences, that with Sophia Westcomb, six of Richardson's letters are printed here; of these only one (admittedly the best) was in Barbauld; three of the others were previously available only in the not·very accessible Elirapean Magazine for 1808; and the two others were available only in manuscript, one in the Forster Collection in London, and the other in the New York Public Library. Among other unpublisbed letters there are several that add notably to our understanding of Richardson 's literary life, especially an early letter to Stephen Duck, and a very interesting letter to Dr. George Cheyne which illuminates Richardson's hardly-concealed dislike for Pope's writings. One is always, and justifiably, suspicious of any selected edition; but with less rcasan in the present case than in most. Professor Carroll's selection seems perceptive and judicious-in a spot comparison with my own transcripts of twenty of what seemed exceptionally interesting unpublished letters, no less than seventeen were reprinted here. Professor Carroll's editing merits high praise on other grounds. The apparatus in general, though not elaborate, is useful and to the point: the Introduction succinctly and informatively surveys the history of the letters, the personal relations between the correspondents , and Richardson's epistolary theory and practice; there is a good index, and a List of Recipients of Letters; the footnotes give enough of the letters from Richardson's correspondents, in extract or summary, to set each letter clearly in its epistolary and biographical context; and the information about dating, about the correspondents, and about allusions in the letters condenses a great deal of what must often have been extremely lahorious and extensive research. .: . Mrs. Barbauld's edition, arbitrary, incomplete, and largely unannotated as it is, wi~l remain a necessary source for scholars, because of its large scale, and because it gives hoth sides of many of the major correspondences; but until a complete correspondence comes out (and this, surely, should not be until Grandison is once again in print), Carroll's Selected Letters will remain the most valuable edition for the scholar; for the general reader, it is not likely to be superseded. (IAN WA'IT) ...