Pamela in 1842

[Robin Hamilton]

This is from worldcat, so I don't vouch for the entire reliability (is there
an eighteenth century specialist in the house?) but it looks as if the
original _Pamela_ was published in 1740.

Richardson, Samuel. Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded [Pt. 1]. In a Series of
Familiar Letters from a Beautiful Young Damsel, to Her Parents. London:
Printed for C. Rivington, in St. Paul's church-yard; and J. Osborn, in
Pater-noster row, 1740.

... this seems to have been followed up within a year by an expanded
edition:

"The First part of PAMELA met with a success greatly exceeding the most
sanguine expectations ..."

Richardson, Samuel. Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded: In a Series of Familiar
Letters From A Beautiful Young Damsel To her Parents : In order to cultivate
the Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both
Sexes ; In Four Volumes ; A Narrative which has its Foundation in Truth and
Nature ... 1. Dublin: Ewing u.a, 1741.

... so it looks very much as if the quotation Victor has identified -- "the
boughs of the tree of liberty" -- would be located in the third volume of
the expanded edition. and would date from 1741.

I wouldn't go to the stake for this, but short of actually eyeballing a
physical copy, I'd think it's fairly certain that this particular tree of
liberty, watered by the tears of pedants, locates itself in 1741,

Actually, it might be even more messy than that.  This from Wiki (the change
of style suggests that this was written by someone other than the author of
the preceding plot-summary there):

_______________________________

Richardson's revisions

The popularity of Richardson's novel led to much public debate over its
message and style. Richardson responded to some of the criticisms by
revising the novel for each new edition; he even created a "reading group"
of women to advise him. Some of the most significant changes that he made
were his alterations to Pamela's vocabulary. In the first edition her
diction is that of a lower-class maid, but in later editions Richardson made
her more linguistically middle-class by removing the lower-class idioms from
her speech. In this way, he made her marriage to Mr. B less scandalous as
she appeared to be more his equal in education.
_______________________________

As it's a quite stunningly boring book, I think we've already given it more
attention than it deserves.  <g>

Robin

----- Original Message -----
From: "victor steinbok" <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2010 4:51 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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> I was happy with the citation I got and there was no citation to volume 4

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