Selected Letters Of Samuel Richardson PDF Download

Shy and diffident in company, when addressing his friends on paper, Samuel Richardson was at ease, warm and direct. He enjoyed writing letters, and placed a high value on them as a means of deepening friendships. At his best, his letters have the ease of conversation among intimates, not the polished prose of an "author" concerned strictly with form or style. The letters in this volume have been selected from the period in which Richardson was writing his great novels. The editor has been at pains to select those letters or passages from letters that bear on the themes and characters of the novels, on his craftsmanship and literary judgments, and on his own personality. While Richardson returns again and again to certain topics, some letters or excerpts are included because they treat the same matter from a different point of view, or with new observations. The needs of the student and scholar have been uppermost in the mind of the editor, who has tried to include the most helpful texts, if at times at the cost of some repetition.