Richardson, Celebrity, and Editorial Mediation in Anna Meades’s Sir William Harrington

In 1757, Anna Meades wrote to Samuel Richardson. She had written a novel in his style. Would he read it, correct it, and publish it? Sir William Harrington (1771) is one of only four books supposed to have been guided by Richardson’s advice after the end of his writing career. Richardson wrote novels not simply to entertain, but to influence; he created models of moral behaviour for his readers to follow. Meades’s novel engages with Richardson’s celebrity status towards several ends, creating a text that operates as a celebrity relic, producing a text that will eventually reach other readers than Richardson’s audience, and thus opening the moral community beyond its original scope. This article looks specifically at this literary celebrity mediation as it operates on several levels. The novel serves as a relic of Richardson, offering the lure that the reader may approximate a synthetic relationship with Richardson by developing an intellectual connection with Richardson’s ideas, friends, protégées, and favoured texts. The novel thus offers readers a synthesized public intimacy with Richardson.