Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) was a highly regarded printer and influential novelist when he produced his final work of fiction, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). Like his other novels, it was written in epistolary form, reflecting his lifelong interest in letter writing and the letter as a genre. Covering the period 1750–1754, many of these fully annotated letters are published from manuscript for the first time, or have been restored to their complete original form. Recording Richardson's relationships with leading cultural figures including Samuel Johnson, Colley Cibber and Elizabeth Carter, the volume reveals his support for other authors while struggling to complete his own 'story of a Good Man'. This publishing saga also incorporates Richardson's responses to the Irish piracy of his novel, and his exchanges with anonymous fans, including those who attacked the novel's tolerance for Catholicism and those who pleaded for a sequel.

Samuel Richardson was one of the great letter-writers in English. His three great novels, Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison were written in epistolary form, and Richardson himself was known in his time for the way he used his letters for both professional and personal purposes. As a printer, Richardson corresponded with authors, readers, and other printers and publishers. As a friend, he supported his correspondents when they were personally struggling. As a novelist, he engaged readers both before and after the publication of his works, soliciting their opinion and defending his own methods. Correspondence Primarily on Pamela and Clarissa (1732–1749) gives us Richardson the printer, the friend, and the novelist in the crucial early years of his unexpected success and fame as a literary writer, providing insight into how and why he created innovative works that changed the course of literary history.

Recovers and analyzes novel manuscripts and post-publication revisions to construct a new narrative about eighteenth-century authorship.

Examines Samuel Richardson's letters and novels, and explores the interconnection between fiction and correspondence in eighteenth-century literature.

Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) was an established master printer when, at the age of 51, he published his first novel, Pamela, and immediately became one of the most influential and admired writers of his time. Not only were all Richardson's novels written in epistolary form: he was also a prolific letter-writer himself. This volume in the first ever full edition of Richardson's correspondence includes his letters to and from Aaron Hill, the poet, dramatist and entrepreneur (1685–1750). Hill was Richardson's earliest literary friend and advisor as he embarked on a new career as a novelist. This correspondence offers fascinating insight into the compositional processes not just of the two Pamela novels, but of Richardson's later novels Clarissa and The History of Sir Charles Grandison. The volume also contains Richardson's correspondence with Hill's three literary daughters, which forms an invaluable chapter in the history of women's writing and literary criticism.

Historians of the intellectual and literary culture of the Enlightenment have recognised the importance of Andrew Millar (1705-68). His publisher's imprint adorned the title-pages of the most important works of the eighteenth century, in fiction, poetry, drama, medicine, and philosophy. This is the first extended study of Millar's commercial and social role in the commissioning, production, circulation, and consumption of Enlightenment literature in Britain. Providing a new intervention on the culture of Enlightenment this study shows how and why Millar provoked major controversies through his role as friend, patron, and publisher to great rivals in the republic of letters. An unprecedent analysis of publishing and authorship at the intersection of politics, business, visual arts, moral debate, and literary self-fashioning, this study of Andrew Millar also shows the degree to which Scottish identity shaped a professional career within London's rise as the cosmopolitan centre of learning and trade at the heart of the British empire. This volume presents hundreds of previously unpublished letters that passed between Millar and his literary network, and includes the 52 letters that passed between Millar and David Hume, the majority of which have been edited for the first time since 1931. This is a major contribution to the material and intellectual worlds that defined the culture of Enlightenment in Britain during the eighteenth century, casting new light in the history of publishing and authorship.

Since the publication of his novel Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded in 1740, Samuel Richardson's place in the English literary tradition has been secured. But how can that place best be described? Over the three centuries since embarking on his printing career the 'divine' novelist has been variously understood as moral crusader, advocate for women, pioneer of the realist novel and print innovator. Situating Richardson's work within these social, intellectual and material contexts, this new volume of essays identifies his centrality to the emergence of the novel, the self-help book, and the idea of the professional author, as well as his influence on the development of the modern English language, the capitalist economy, and gendered, medicalized, urban, and national identities. This book enables a fuller understanding and appreciation of Richardson's life, work and legacy, and points the way for future studies of one of English literature's most celebrated novelists.