The History of Sir Charles Grandison

The exact relationship between Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and Richardson's The History of Sir Charles Grandison cannot be known, but the character Charles Grandison was designed as a morally "better" hero than the character 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 did not work on it until he was prompted the next year (June 1750) by Anne Donnellan and Miss Sutton, who were "both very intimate with one Clarissa Harlowe: and both extremely earnest with him to give them a good man". There were four Dublin presses used to make unauthorized copies of 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 unlicensed copies, and Richardson relied on seven additional printers to speed up the production of Grandison. In November 1753, Richardson ran an ad in ''The Gentleman's Magazine to announce the "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 the next two volumes appeared in December. The final 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. ==Plot summary==

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". In particular, Richardson is referring to novels of Fielding, his literary rival. This note was published with the final volume of Grandison 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. ==Critical Edition==

• The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson (4 Volumes - April/May 2022), Edited by E. Derek Taylor, Melvyn New, and Elizabeth Kraft ==Structure==

. National Portrait Gallery, Westminster, England. 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 emphasise the plot's drama, especially when Lovelace alters Clarissa's letters. However, the dramatic mood is replaced in Grandison with a celebration of Grandison'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. This sharing of personal feelings transforms the individual responders into a chorus that praises the actions of Grandison, Harriet, and Clementina. Furthermore, this chorus of characters emphasises the importance of the written word over the merely subjective, even saying that "Love declared on paper means far more than love declared orally". ==Themes==

20th-century literary critic Carol Flynn characterises Sir Charles Grandison as a "man of feeling who truly cannot be said to feel". Although Flynn believes that Grandison represents a moral character, she finds Grandison's "goodness" "repellent". 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, Grandison and Clementina compromise by agreeing that their sons would be raised as Protestants and their daughters raised as Catholics. To complement the role of marriage, Grandison opposes "sexual deviance" in the 18th century. ==Critical response==

Richardson shared drafts of the novel with Dorothy Lady Bradshaigh who had contacted him anonymously when Clarissa was part published. He met her in March 1750 and she would make comments on his drafts of The History of Sir Charles Grandison and he would make amendments. Richardson wrote that his book was "owing to you … more than to any one Person besides". Richardson valued her opinions and he planned to reissue Pamela and Clarissa based on her comments. Dorothy identified herself with the character of Charlotte in The History of Sir Charles Grandison. Samuel Johnson was one of the first to respond to the published novel, but he focused primarily on the preface: "If you were to require my opinion which part [in the preface] 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." Andrew Murphy, in the ''Gray's Inn Journal'', emphasised the history of the production when he wrote: Sir Walter Scott, who favoured the bildungsroman and open plots, wrote in his "Prefatory Memoir to Richardson" to The Novels of Samuel Richardson (1824): Although Scott is antipathetic towards Richardson's final novel, not everyone was of the same opinion; Jane Austen was a devotee of the novel, which was part of her mental furniture to the point where she could claim to describe "all that was ever said or done in the cedar parlour". She would for example casually compare a flower in a new cap she got to the white feather described by Harriet Byron as being in hers. Nevertheless, throughout her life she also subjected Grandison to much affectionate, even satirical mockery – adapting it into a dramatic lampoon (not published until 1980) around 1800. Her juvenilia also included a heroine who guyed Harriet Byron's frequent fainting, through being "in such a hurry to have a succession of fainting fits, that she had scarcely patience enough to recover from one before she fell into another". As late as 1813, she would respond to a long letter from her sister Cassandra by exclaiming "Dear me!...Like Harriet Byron I ask, what am I to do with my Gratitude". 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." Some critics, such as Mark Kinkead-Weekes and Margaret Doody, like the novel and emphasise the importance of the moral themes that Richardson takes up. In a 1987 article, Kinkead-Weekes admits that the "novel fails at the [moral] crisis" and "it must be doubtful whether it could hope for much life in the concluding volumes". ==References==