Clarissa Harlowe or the history of a young lady — Volume 9

Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.3
Word count
13K words
Chapters
2

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Women's FateLove EntanglementsPsychological InsightVirtue ThemeMoral TestEpistolary NovelNarrative Poetry18th Century England

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 9 by Samuel RichardsonAuthor: Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: May 1, 2004

Editor's review

As Volume 9 of Clarissa, this installment pushes the tension of epistolary narrative to its limit: the heroine's fate tightens step by step through long correspondence, misunderstanding, and unequal power, and readers can clearly see how Richardson uses private writing to stage a public moral trial. Its value lies not in sensational plotting but in a plain, detailed analysis of chastity, reputation, family authority, and women's circumstances; the multiple perspectives of the letter form also give every character room for self-defense. The English original belongs to eighteenth-century prose, with long sentences and many honorifics, and suits readers willing to slow down. In terms of reading context, it is better suited to close reading for the history of the English novel, epistolary literature, or eighteenth-century women's writing than to commuting entertainment. The Project Gutenberg edition is convenient for searching and comparison, but note that it is a single volume of a long work, and the first eight volumes are needed to fully understand the characters' relationships and the causes and effects of events.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the first eight volumes first, or at least understand the main characters' relationships, before starting this volume
  2. After each group of letters, summarize the writer's intention and the change in events in one sentence
  3. Prepare a character relationship chart and mark differences in how the same event is narrated in different letters
  4. When encountering a long sentence, first identify subject, verb, and object, then look back at the context to confirm tone and stance

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2

FAQ

Can I read Volume 9 directly without having read the first eight volumes? Not recommended. Volume 9 is a later part of a long epistolary novel, and the characters' relationships, misunderstandings, and the causes and effects of events are all built on the first eight volumes. Reading it alone will lose a great deal of context, making it hard to judge the implications and stances in the letters. If time is limited, at least learn the main line of Clarissa, Lovelace, and the family conflict before starting this volume.
Is this book suitable for learning English? It can be used as advanced reading material, but it is not suitable as an introductory textbook. Eighteenth-century prose has long sentences and many honorifics and letter formats, and modern readers need some patience. If the goal is learning English, it is advisable to use an edition with modern notes or an introduction, first grasp the main idea of a paragraph, and then deal with detailed expression.
What are the features of using the Project Gutenberg edition? This edition is a free electronic text, convenient for searching character names, keywords, and chapters, and easy to copy and quote. But it usually does not include modern scholarly notes, and its version information and page numbering system differ from printed books. When citing it for research, check other authoritative editions, and note that this is a single volume of a long work, not a standalone complete story.

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About the author

Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761 Author

Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) was an English novelist known for his epistolary fiction. The library holds 15 of his works, including the multi-volume Clarissa Harlowe and Volume II of Pamela. Clarissa centers on the fate of a young woman and unfolds through a large body of letters, revealing inner lives and family conflict, while Pamela follows the experiences of a maidservant and explores moral trials and ideas of marriage. Richardson is noted for the epistolary form, detailed psychological portrayal, and emotional intensity, and he had a significant influence on the later development of the English novel. Public information is limited, so his biographical details are not elaborated here; this overview is based only on the works held and general literary knowledge.