Clarissa and Tom Jones

This chapter further examines the creative and critical dialogue between Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding. From the publication of the two original volumes of Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded in November 1740 onwards, Fielding responded not only to the subject matter of Richardson's fiction, but also to what he regarded as shortcomings in his narrative technique. He takes particular note of Richardson's use of the epistolary form. According to Ian Watt, the private letter provides the ‘nearest record...in ordinary life’ of ‘this minute-by-minute content of consciousness which constitutes what the individual's personality really is, and dictates his relationship to others’. Yet this belief about letters tends to downplay, if not discount altogether, not merely the disadvantages of what one of Richardson's characters (Lovelace) calls ‘this lively present-tense manner’, but also the full complexity of his narrative method in Clarissa (1747–8).