The preoccupations of eighteenth-century novelist Samuel Richardson—the inequities of gender and sexuality; race and white femininity; masculinity, sadism, and control; religion and selfhood; authorship and artistic form—continue to resonate with contemporary readers. This fresh collection reconsiders his oeuvre, expanding and significantly updating critical debate on its meaning and importance. In these lively and engaging essays, contributors examine historically overlooked works, provide new readings of his best-known novels Pamela and Clarissa, and stake a serious claim for the importance of his final novel, Sir Charles Grandison. Diverse, inventive, and provocative, these essays demonstrate the complexity, relevance, and surprising legacies of Richardson’s novels and characters—finding traces in post-conceptual poetry, detective fiction, and in the fantasies of historical romance. Revisiting Richardson reflects on a decade of scholarship while delivering innovative perspectives on an author whose work continues to be indispensable for understanding the history of the novel.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed by Rutgers University Press.
"The essays track Richardson's significance to later writers, from the late 18th to the 21st century, convincingly excavating Richardson's presence in the works of Elizabeth Inchbald, Charlotte Brontë, the Marquis de Sade, Ford Madox Ford, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Nicholas D. Nace, and Trisha Low. . . . Highly recommended."
"Revisiting Richardson brings to bear on this protean author the urgent critical and social concerns of the 2020s—including those of queer studies, critical race theory, debates about female happiness and male sexualities, conceptual writing, and genre fiction. The Richardson we encounter here is at once new and strangely familiar, timeless and of our time. A must-read for Richardsonians and those seeking to explore a presentist eighteenth century."
"Revisiting Richardson is a timely volume that reveals the exciting avenues left to explore in the work of one of the eighteenth century's most canonical authors. With scholarly approaches ranging from book history, to queer studies, to new formalism, to media studies, this volume offers new and exciting perspectives on the breadth of Richardson's works, from The Apprentice's Vade Mecum to Sir Charles Grandison."
"These original essays offer exciting, fresh approaches to Richardson's writings, fulfilling the promise of 'revisiting Richardson' but also seeking out his enduring influence in surprising new contexts. Questions of gender, sexuality, race, class, and selfhood come to the fore in this volume, which cements Richardson's relevance for 2025 and beyond."
"By situating Richardson in various contexts and approaches, this outstanding collection of essays will spark new critical conversations. Original in conception and execution, Revisiting Richardson marks an important moment in the long history of scholarship on the author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison."
Introduction 1 Rebecca Anne Barr and Bonnie Latimer 1 Citizens of the Future: The Apprentice’s VadeMecum in Context 16 Bonnie Latimer 2 Queer Time in Pamela 32 Declan Kavanagh 3 “Happy, Happy, Happy, Thrice Happy Pamela”? Gendered Happiness and the Happiness Gap in Pamela and Pamela II 48 Heather Ladd 4 Conceptual Richardson 67 Amelia Dale 5 Clarissa with Sade: Persecution and Plotafter Richardson 85 Samuel Rowe 6 Clarissa and White Supremacy: Race, Gender,and Erasure 102 Kerry Sinanan 7 Misogyny and the Male Virgin in Sir Charles Grandison 122 Rebecca Anne Barr 8 Solving for Y: Fictive Kinship and Character in The History of Sir Charles Grandison 139 Sarah Berkowitz 9 “One in a Hundred”: Extending the Influence of Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison 153 E. Derek Taylor Acknowledgments 167 Bibliography 169 Notes on Contributors 183 Index 185
REBECCA ANNE BARR is an associate professor in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge in the UK. She has published widely on gender, sexual violence, and the novel, and is coeditor of Bellies, Bowels, and Entrails in the Eighteenth Century and Ireland and Masculinities in History.
BONNIE LATIMER is a professor of Restoration and eighteenth-century literature at the University of Southampton in the UK, where she is also the associate dean for education in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. She has published on Richardson and various other eighteenth-century topics.
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