Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson was most likely born in 1689 in Mackworth, Derbyshire, England. Richardson kept some aspects of his life, including his birth, private, possibly to disguise the fact that he grew up in poverty. One of nine children, Richardson became the apprentice to a printer, in part because his father couldn’t afford to pay for Richardson’s education as a clergyman. Richardson showed a talent for telling stories at an early age and he sometimes helped others write letters, including helping girls he knew write responses to love letters. Despite this, however, Richardson didn’t publish his first novel, Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded, until he was 51 years old, after many years of running a successful print shop in London. The novel sold very well and was also a critical success—today, it’s considered one of the first modern novels in English, if not the first. Pamela spawned several parodies and sequels from other authors, but Richardson’s own sequel (Pamela in her Exalted Condition) was much less successful than the original. A few years later, however, Richardson wrote Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady, which revisited and expanded on many of the ideas of Pamela, earning even greater praise. He died of a stroke at age 71.