Women Writers and Samuel Richardson: Novel Criticism in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

In the mid-eighteenth century, women writers participated in dynamic and innovative criticism about the novel form in print and in manuscript. Drawing on letters, pamphlets, periodicals and the novels themselves, this thesis explores such ‘novel’ criticism, with a focus on the relationships that women writers had with Samuel Richardson at the height of his fame as an epistolary novelist between 1749 and 1754. Some of these women were published authors themselves, such as Sarah Fielding, Jane Collier, and Eliza Haywood, whereas others like Dorothy, Lady Bradshaigh and Sarah Wescomb Scudamore had lengthy correspondences with Richardson. While scholars have previously investigated Richardson’s relationships with women writers, the emphasis has been on his role as literary mentor. Yet, the complexities of these women’s relationships with Richardson – as a master printer, as a prolix correspondent, and as a successful novelist – repay closer examination.

This thesis, incorporating new evidence about the London print trade and Richardson’s archived correspondence, is attentive to how the materiality of texts affects meaning and illuminates debates about the mid-century novel form and its reception history. It adds to recent scholarship about script and print as co-existing technologies by arguing for the fluidity of print and manuscript mediums for novel criticism between the published endings of Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison. The texts discussed include Remarks on Clarissa, responses to Grandison, and novels such as The Invisible Spy, The Cry, and Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister. By looking back to critical traditions from the seventeenth century, as well as forwards to the establishment of reviewing periodicals and the emergence of the professional woman critic by the end of the eighteenth century, this thesis reconstructs the elusive contexts we need in order to appreciate the contributions – often anonymous, hidden, and subtle – made by mid-century women writers as novel critics.