Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa": An Index Analyzing the Characters, Subjects, and Place Names (review)

Abstract

144EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION15:1 Susan Price Karpuk. SamuelRichardson's "Clarissa": An IndexAnalyzing the Characters, Subjects, and Place Names. New York: AMS Press, 2001. xiv + 476pp. US$124.50. ISBN 0-404-63534-2. When Richardson published his third and final novel, The Hhtory of Sir Charles Grandhon, in a Series ofLetters Publishedfrom the Originals by the Editor of "Pamela" and "Clarissa" (1754), he added to "vol. VI and Last," "An Historical and Characteristical Index" (a title that could be applied to Susan Price Karpuk's Index to "Clarissa"). The Grandhon "Index" is a more elaborate version of the "Collection ofSentiments" produced for the 1751 Clarissa arranged under alphabetical entries, such as "Travelling, its uses and abuses ...."; "Trifles, insisted upon...."; if at once more index-like, "Hyaenas, male and female, which most dangerous....; "Duelling ... Edict against it ...." (an elaborate entry with references to ancient Rome, the Turks,Jews, Christians , and Louis XIV). It is also a more directorial pressure on the reader. Richardson's last publication was A Collection of... Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions and Reflections ... [in] "Pamela," "Clarissa," and "Sir Charhs Grandhon" (1755), with three accompanying Tables. He asserted that "the novels were all written for the sake of instruction to young people, who are apt to read rapidly with a view only to story" and that A Collection would give "the pith and marrow ofwhat they had been reading." As a printer, publisher, and writer, Richardson clearly had a turn for indexes and tables. He wrote in 1753: "Some [booksellers] even thought fit to seek me rather than I them, because of the readiness I shewed to oblige them, writing indexes" (TL·Richardson-Stinstra Correspondence, ed. W.C. Slattery [1969], p. 26). The cross-referenced table of contents to his edition of a selection of a seventeenth-century diplomatic correspondence, The Negotiations ofSir Thomas Roe (1740) , is an eighth of the length of the text of the summarized letters. Other indexed work passed through his printing office , such as volumes of the Philosophical Transactions, which he printed for the Royal Society; editions, partly his, of Defoe's Tour Thro' the Whole Island ofGreat Britain (1735 and later printings); and the huge project of printing theJournals oftL· House ofCommons, with indexes printed later. The testimony of two readers is some indication of contemporary public interest in an "index" to Clarissa. Richardson himself writes: "A gentleman to whom I had not the pleasure to be known [nl4: Solomon Lowe refers to the index he has made for Clarissa: letter to Richardson, 23 May 1748], having amused himselfwith collecting many of the moral Sentiments scatter'd thro' the volumes, ofwhich he was so good as to make me a Present, I think to enlarge his collection, and insert it at the end of the work, that so, on a general Retrospection ofthe whole, it may appear to be, what I had the presumption to design it, A History ofLife and Manners, and not a mere Novel or Romance" (Samuel Richardson to David Graham, 3 May 1750, in Selected Letters ofRichardson, ed.John. Carroll [1964], p. 158). REVIEWS145 SamuelJohnson's letter of 9 March 1751 to Richardson is also worth consideration in this context: "I wish you would add an Index Rerum [of things as distinct from people] that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it, which at present he cannot do unless he knows in which volume it is told: for Clarissa is not a performance to be read with eagerness and laid aside for ever, but will be occasionally consulted by the busy, the aged and the studious, and therefore I beg that this Edition [the third] by which I suppose Posterity is to abide, may want nothing that can facilitate its use" (The Letters ofSamuelJohnson, ed. Bruce Redford [1989], 1:47-48). With electronic aid, Clarissa has now generated a satisfactorily bulky Index , printed in ample fashion, "The main organizing idea [of which] is to isolate and index each character separately." Starting from a complete Alphabetical Lht of Characters, including aliases, friends, relatives, and remembered characters, an index for each one of twenty principal and many other less important characters may be found: the names of the...