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The History of Sir Charles Grandison, commonly called Grandison, is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson first published in February 1753. The book was a response to Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, which parodied the morals presented in Richardson's previous novels. The novel follows the story of Harriet Byron who is pursued by Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. After she rejects Pollexfen, he kidnaps her, and she is only freed when Sir Charles Grandison comes to her rescue. After his appearance, the novel focuses on his history and life, and he becomes its central figure.

The novel follows an epistolary format similar to Richardson's previous novels, Clarissa and Pamela. Unlike those novels, Charles Grandison, the leading male character, is a morally good man and lacks the villainous intent that is manifested by the Lovelace or Mr B (characters of Clarissa and Pamela respectively). Richardson was motivated to create such a male figure because of the prompting of his many female friends who wanted a counterpart to the virtues exhibited by Richardson's female characters.

Background

Although it is hard to know the exact relationship between Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Charles Grandison was designed as a morally "better" hero than Tom Jones. In 1749, a friend asked Richardson "to give the world his idea of a good man and fine gentleman combined". Richardson hesitated to begin such a project, and he was prompted to begin the next year (June 1750) by Mrs. Donnelland and Miss Sutton, who were "both very intimate with one Clarissa Harlowe: and both extremely earnest with him to give them a good man". Near the end of 1751, Richardson sent a draft of the novel to Mrs. Donnellan, and the novel was being finalized in the middle of 1752.

While Thomas Killingbeck, a compositor, and Peter Bishop, a proofreader, were working for Richardson in his print shop during 1753, Richardson discovered that printers in Dublin had copies of The History of Sir Charles Grandison and began printing the novel before the English edition was to be published. Richardson suspected that they were involved with the pirating of the novel and immediately fired them. Immediately following the firing, Richardson wrote:

"the Want of the same Ornaments, or Initial Letters , in each Vol. will help to discover them , although they should put the Booksellers Names that I have affixed. I have got some Friends to write down to Scotland, to endeavour to seize their Edition, if offered to be imported." Samuel Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh, 19 October 1753

There were four Dublin presses used to try to pirate the novel, but none of them were able to add the ornaments that could effectively mimic Richardson's own. However, there were still worries about the pirated copies, and Richardson relied on seven additional printers to speed up the production of Gradison.

In November 1753, Richardson ran an add in the Gentleman's Magazine to announce: "History of Sir Charles Grandison: in a Series of Letters published from the Originals, - By the Editor of Pamela and Clarissa, London: Printed for S. Richardson, and sold by Dodsley in Pall Mall and others." The first four volumes were published on 13 November 1753, and in December the next two would follow. The remaining volume was published in March to complete a seven volume series while a six volume set was simultaneously published. Richardson held the sole copyright to Grandison, and, after his death, twenty-fourth shares of Grandison were sold for 20 pounds each. Posthumous editions were published in 1762 (including revisions by Richardson) and 1810.

History of Sir Charles Grandison

As with his previous novels, Richardson prefaced the novel by claiming to be merely the editor, saying, "How such remarkable collections of private letters fell into the editor's hand he hopes the reader will not think it very necessary to enquire". However, Richardson did not keep his authorship secret, and on the prompting of those like Johnson, dropped this framing device from the second edition.

The novel begins with the character of Harriet Byron leaving the house of her uncle, George Selby, to visit Mr and Mrs Reeves, her cousins, in London. She is an orphan who was educated by her grandparents, and, though she lacks parents, she is heir to a fortune of fifteen thousand pounds, which causes many suitors to pursue her. In London, she is pursued by three suitors, Mr Greville, Mr Fenwick, and Mr Orme. This courtship is followed by more suitors: Mr Fowler, Sir Rowland Meredith, and Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. The final one, Pollexfen, pursues Byron vigorously, which causes her to criticize him over a lack of morals and decency of character. However, Pollexfen does not end his pursuits of Byron until she explains that she could never receive his visits again.

Pollexfen, unwilling to be without Byron, decides to kidnap her while she attended a masquerade at the Haymarket (ironically, the site of Henry Fielding's Little Theatre). She is then imprisoned at Lisson Grove with the support of a widow and two daughters. While he keeps her prisoner, Pollexfen makes it clear to her that she shall be his wife, and that anyone who challenges that will die by his hand. Byron attempts to escape from the house, but this fails. In order to prevent her from trying to escape again, Pollexfen transports Byron to his home at Windsor. However, he is stopped at Hounslow Heath, where Charles Grandison hears Byron's pleas for help and immediately attacks Pollexfen. After this rescue, Grandison takes Byron to Colnebrook, the home of Grandison's brother-in-law, the "Earl of L."

After Pollexfen recovers from the attack, he sets out to duel Grandison. However, Grandison refuses on the grounds that dueling is harmful to society. To Pollexfen, he says:

"It was natural for me to look into history, for the rise and progress of custom so much and so justly my aversion, so contrary to all love divine and human, and particularly to that true heroism which Christianity enjoins, when it recommends meekness, moderation, and humility, as the glory of the human nature" (II)

After explaining why obedience to God and society are important, Grandison wins Pollexfen over and obtains his apology to Byron for his actions. She accepts his apology, and he follows with a proposal to marriage. She declines because she, as she admits, is in love with Grandison. However, a new suitor, the Earl of D, appears, and it emerges that Grandison promised himself to an Italian woman, Signorina Clementina della Porretta. As Grandison explains, he was in Italy years before and rescued the Barone della Porretta and a relationship developed between himself and Clementina, the baron's only daughter. However, Grandison could not marry her, as she demanded that he, an Anglican Protestant, become a Catholic, and he was unwilling to do so. After he left, she grew ill out of despair, and the Porrettas were willing to accept his religion, if he would return and make Clementina happy once more. Grandison steps aside so that Byron and D can marry and quickly returns to Italy to be with Clementina.

In a "Concluding Note" to Gradison, Richardson writes:

"It has been said, in behalf of many modern fictitious pieces, in which authors have given success (and happiness, as it is called) to their heroes of vicious if not profligate characters, that they have exhibted Human Nature as it is. Its corruption may, indeed, be exhibited in the faulty character; but need pictures of this be held out in books? Is not vice crowned with success, triumphant, and rewarded, and perhaps set off with wit and spirit, a dangerous representation?"

In particular, Richardson is referring to Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and Amelia. This note was published with the final volume of Gradison in March 1754, a few months before Fielding left for Lisbon. Before Fielding died in Lisbon, he included a response to Richardson in his preface to Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.

Use of the epistolary form

The epistolary form unites The History of Sir Charles Grandison with Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa, but Richardson uses the form in a different way for his final work. In Clarissa, the letters emphasize the plot's drama, especially when Lovelace alters Clarissa's letters. However, the dramatic mood is replaced in Grandison with a celebration of Gandison's moral character. In addition to this lack of dramatic emphasis, the letters of Grandison do not serve to develop character, as the moral core of each character is already complete at the outset.

In Richardson's previous novels, the letters operated as a way to express internal feelings and describe the private lives of characters; however, the letters of Grandison serve a public function. The letters are not kept to individuals, but forwarded to others in order to inform a larger community of the novel's action. In return, letters share the recipients' responses to the events detailed within the letters. This sharing of personal feelings transforms the individual responders into a chorus that praises the actions of Sir Charles, Harriet, and Clementina. Furthermore, this chorus of characters emphasizes the importance of the written word over the merely subjective, even saying that "Love declared on paper means far more than love declared orally".

Social responsibility

Carol Flynn characterizes Sir Charles Grandison as a "man of feeling who truly cannot be said to feel". He claims that he is filled with sexual passions, but these never come to light, and he represents a "perfect" moral character in regards to respecting others. Unlike Richardson's previous Clarissa, there is an emphasis on society and how moral character is viewed by the public. As such, Grandison stresses characters acting in the socially accepted ways instead of following their emotional impulses. The psychological realism of Richardson's earlier work gives way to the expression of exemplars. In essence, Grandison promises "spiritual health and happiness to all who follow the good man's exemplary pattern". This can be taken as a sort of "political model of the wise ruler", especially with Charles's somewhat pacifist methods of achieving his goals.

Carol Flynn is not alone in finding Grandison's "goodness" "repellent". Richardson's other characters, like Clarissa, also exhibit high moral characters, but they are capable of changing over time. However, Grandison is never challenged in the way that Clarissa is, and he is a static, passive character. Grandison, in all situations, obeys the dictates of society and religion, fulfilling obligations rather than expressing personality. However, a character like Harriet is able to express herself fully, and it is possible that Grandison is prohibited from doing likewise because of his epistolary audience, the public.

In terms of religious responsibility, Gradison, is unwilling to change his faith, and Clementina initially refuses to marry him over his religion. Gradison attempts to convince her to reconsider by claiming that "her faith would not be at risk". Besides his dedication to his own religion, and his unwillingness to prevent Clementina from being dedicated to her own, he says that he is bound to helping the Porretta family. Although potentially controversial to the 18th century British public, Charles and Clementina compromise by agreeing that their sons would be raised as Protestants and their daughters raised as Catholics. In addition to the religious aspects, the work gives "the portrait of how a good marriage should be created and sustained". To complement the role of marriage, Grandison opposes "sexual deviance" in the 18th century.

Critical response

Samuel Johnson was one of the first to respond to the novel, but he focused primarily on the preface:

"If you were to require my opinion which part should be changed, I should be inclined to the supression of that part which seems to disclaim the composition. What is modesty, if it deserts from truth? Of what use is the disguise by which nothing is concealed? You must forgive this, because it is meant well."

Sarah Fielding, in her introduction to The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, claims that people have an "insatiable Curiosity for Novels or Romances" that tell of the "rural Innocence of a Joseph Andrews, or the inimitable Virtues of Sir Charles Grandison". Andrew Murphy, in the Gray's Inn Journal, emphasized the history of the production when he wrote:

"Mr. Richardson, Author of the celebrated Pamela, and the justly admired Clarissa... an ingenuous Mind must be shocked to find, that Copies of very near all this Work, from which the Public may reasonable expect both Entertainment and Instruction, have been clandestinely and fraudulently obtained by a Set of Booksellers in Dublin, who have printed of the same, and advertised it in the public Papers.... I am not inclined to cast national Reflections, but I must avow, that I looked up this to be a more flagrant and atrocious Proceeding than any I have heard of for a long Time."

A few decades later, the response was favourable towards The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Sir Walter Scott, who favored the bildungsroman and open plots, recounted a friend explaining why "she enjoyed hearing Sir Charles Grandison read aloud": "Should I drop asleep in course of the reading, I am sure, when I awake, I shall have lost none of the story, but shall find the party, where I left them, conversing in the cedar-parlour" She was not alone in this opinion; Jane Austen enjoyed the novel so much that she adapted it into a play around 1800, although it wasn't published until 1980. Also, she claimed that the novel was so familiar that she could describe "all that was ever said or done in the cedar parlour".

Later critics believed that it is possible that Richardson's work failed because the story deals with a "good man" instead of a "rake", which prompted Richardson's biographers Thomas Eaves and Ben Kimple to claim, this "might account for the rather uneasy relationship between the story of the novel and the character of its hero, who is never credible in his double love - or in any love." Carol Flynn agrees that this possibility is an "attractive one", and conditions it to say that "it is at least certain that the deadly weighted character of Sir Charles stifles the dramatic action of the book." John Mullan suggets that the problem stems from Grandison's role as a hero when he says, "his hero is able to display his virtue in action; as a consequence, Sir Charles Grandison presents its protagonist without the minutely analyzed reflexes of emotion that brought his heroines to life."

Some critics, like Mark Kinkead-Weekes and Margaret Doody, like the novel and emphasis the importance of the moral themes that Richardson takes up.In a later article, Kinkead-Weekes admits that the "novel fails at the crisis" and "it must be doubtful whether it could hope for much life in the concluding volumes". However, those like Jean Hagstrum believe that "Richardson's last novel is considerably better than can be easily imagined by those who have only heart about it. But admittedly it represents a falling off after Clarissa". Others, like Morris Golden simply claim that the novel is a book for old men.

Notes

1. ^ Harris
2. Dobson p. 140
3. Dobson p. 141-142
4. Dobson p. 142
5. Dobson p. 144
6. ^ Sale p. 26
7. Sale p. 251-252
8. Sale p. 252
9. Sale p. 29
10. ^ Dobson p. 145
11. ^ Dobson p. 146
12. Sale p. 90
13. Dobson p. 146
14. ^ Sabor p. 149
15. ^ Flynn p. 236
16. ^ Flynn p. 258
17. McKillop p. 147
18. McKillop p. 148
19. ^ Flynn p. 47
20. ^ Flynn p. 48
21. ^ Flynn p. 49
22. Doody (1998) p. 111
23. ^ Flynn p. 260
24. ^ Flynn p. 261
25. ^ Kinkead-Weekes (1987) p. 70
26. Kinkead-Weekes (1987) p. 71
27. Kinkead-Weekes (1987) p. 72
28. Hagstrum p. 128
29. Hagstrum p. 131"
30. Dobson p. 146-147
31. Fielding (1994) p. 54
32. Dobson p. 167
33. Doody (1983) pp. 200–224
34. Sutherland p. 248
35. Eaves and Kimpel p. 367
36. Mullan p. 243
37. Kinkead-Weekes (1973) p. 291, 294
38. Doody (1974) p. 304
39. Kinkead-Weekes (1987) p. 86
40. Hagstrum p. 127
41. Golden p. 181

References

• Dobson, Austin. Samuel Richardson. Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2003.
• Doody, Margaret Anne (September 1983). "Jane Austen's 'Sir Charles Grandison'". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 38 (2). U of California Press: 200–224. ISSN 0029-0564. Retrieved 2007-11-27.
• Doody, Margaret. A Natural Passion : a Study of the Novels of Samuel Richardson. Oxford: Claredon, 1974.
• Doody, Margaret. "Samuel Richardson: fiction and knowledge" in The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth Century Novel edited by John Richetti, 90-119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Eaves, Thomas and Kimpel, Ben. Samuel Richardson: a Biography. Oxford: Claredon, 1971.
• Fielding, Sarah. The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia. ed. Christopher Johnson. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1994.
• Flynn, Carol. Samuel Richardson: A Man of Letters. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
• Golden, Morris. Richardson's Characters. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963.
• Harris, Jocelyn (1972). "Introduction". Sir Charles Grandison. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192817450.
• Hagstrum, Jean. "Sir Charles Grandison: The Enlarged Family" in Modern Critical Views: Samuel Richardson edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
• Kinkead-Weekes, Mark. Samuel Richardson: Dramatic Novelist. Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1973.
• Kinkead-Weekes, Mark. "Crisis, Resolution, and the Family of the Heart" in Modern Critical Views: Samuel Richardson edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
• McKillop, A. D. "Epistolary Technique in Richardson's Novels", in Samuel Richardson; a collection of critical essays edited by John J Carroll, 147-148. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
• Mullan, John. "Sentimental novels" in The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth Century Novel edited by John Richetti, 236-254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Sabor, Peter. "Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Sarah Fielding". in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1740-1830. Eds. Thomas Keymer and Jon Mee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Sale, William M. Samuel Richardson: Master Printer. Ithica, N. Y.:Cornell University Press, 1950.
• Sutherland, Kathryn. "Jane Austen and the serious modern novel" in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1740-1830. Eds. Thomas Keymer and Jon Mee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

External links

• Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) at Gutenberg
• Entry in the Literary Encyclopedia

• 1753 novels
• Novels by Samuel Richardson
• Epistolary novels