E Derek Taylor, Melvyn New, and Elizabeth Kraft (eds). The History of Sir Charles Grandison

Abstract

Richardson’s prolixity is legendary. The sheer physical heft of his collected work posed a challenge: when confronted with ‘19 Volumes in Twelves, close Printed—In Three Stories—Monstrous!—Who that sees them ranged on one Shelf, will forgive me?’ (xxxix), he fretted. While modern readers often plead ‘TLDR’, being unwilling to excuse the extended psychological vacillations and moral qualms of his heroines, contemporary admirers begged the author for yet more of his fictions. Richardson’s final novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753–54), was partly the product of readers’ requests for a good man to complement his virtuous heroines. Yet, despite being Jane Austen’s favourite novel, Grandison has remained out of favour with readers and critics alike. This is partly due to the lack of a good critical edition. Unlike Clarissa and Pamela, which have both benefitted from affordable and readily available paperback editions, Grandison was last available in Jocelyn Harris’s 1986 edition. Though not quite a classroom text, her Oxford University Press edition granted Grandison a small but growing demographic of academic readers committed, possibly perverse, and compelled by Richardson’s story of the divided love of a painfully perfect hero, told in letters by a roster of women correspondents significantly livelier than Sir Charles himself.