Pamela in 1842

[Robin Hamilton]

I'm guessing here, but the 1740 date might be the first edition of the
original _Pamela_, carrying the story up to the point where Pamela, having
(interminably) fought off the unwanted advances of Mr. B,, finally marries
him, with a later two-volume addition (1742?), still by Richardson, cashing
in on the success of  the original, in which the now-married Pamela does her
Dear Abbey act in yet *more interminable letters.

The Wiki entry on _Pamela_ is a laugh and a half, and I pity the poor
undergraduate who had to plough through the book in order to construct the
plot-summary.

Fielding nailed it in _Shamela_ -- basically, _Pamela_ is a
will-she-won't-she bodice ripper avant the letter.

Robin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Garson O'Toole" <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2010 12:28 AM
Subject: Re: Pamela in 1842


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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
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> Subject:      Re: Pamela in 1842
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> On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 12:08 AM, Robin Hamilton
> <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:
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>> Poster:       Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton2 at BTINTERNET.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Pamela in 1842
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>>
>>> My bad in not extracting "Pamela" from the other six lines of the title
>>> page.
>>>
>>> Joel
>>
>> Oh well, not to feel *too bad -- I never did manage to finish _Clarissa_
>> either.
>>
>> (That was partly because half-way -- no, I exaggerate, about fifty pages
>> in -- I finally found a copy of _The Drapier's Letters_ in a second hand
>> bookshop in Cromer.  Now your man Swift, he wrote like an angel, and
>> Richardson's prose simply wilted beside it.)
>>
>> Robin
>
> FYI: Google Books does contain an earlier edition of Pamela dated 1742
> with a Bodleian Library gift bookplate. The date inscription
> M.DCC.XLII is given on the title page of volume three which contains
> the phrase "Boughs of the Tree of Liberty". There is an OCR error so
> that the 1742 edition does not match the search term "tree of
> liberty". Here is a link to the passage:
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=ot4NAAAAQAAJ&q=Boughs#v=snippet&q=Boughs&f=false
>
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