Rewriting Clarissa: Alternative Endings by Lady Echlin, Lady Bradshaigh, and Samuel Richardson

This article is concerned with four alternative endings to Samuel Richardson’s second and greatest novel, Clarissa (1747–48). The longest and most significant ending was written by Elizabeth, Lady Echlin during the winter of 1748–49 while she visited her sister Dorothy, Lady Bradshaigh at Haigh Hall, Lancaster. Lady Echlin wrote her alternative conclusion shortly after reading the last three volumes of Clarissa, published together in December 1748; she was much distressed by the heroine’s rape at the hand of Lovelace and her subsequent death, and sought to alleviate the tragedy. So too did her sister, Lady Bradshaigh, in two brief new endings of her own: one in a letter to Richardson of December 1748 and the other drafted later in her copy of the first edition of Clarissa. The fourth ending is a fantasy conclusion, outlined by Richardson in a letter to Lady Echlin of 14–18 February 1755. Although the four endings differ in many ways, all create a fate for Lovelace far preferable to that reserved for him in the original tragic novel.