Language and Letters 
in Samuel Richardson’s Networks

Donatella Montini 
University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ (<donatella.montini@uniroma1.it>)

Abstract

This article aims to provide an overview of Samuel Richardson’s social networks, with a special 
focus on the stylistic features of epistolary exchanges between the novelist and other members 
of his circles. In the light of the social network theory, which investigates linguistic variations 
and changes influenced by discourse communities, the present research paper mainly concerns 
aspects related to register, and investigates the influence of Richardson’s ‘dramatic style’ upon 
the members of his epistolary networks, as well as the interpersonal involvement strategies he 
deploys with regard to the addressee and his/her discourse. 

Keywords: Correspondence, Involvement Strategies, Samuel Richardson, Social Networking 

1. Introduction

In 1751 Miss Susanna Highmore, daughter of the painter Joseph Highmore, 
sketched a group of Samuel Richardson’s friends, as they listened to the novelist 
reading from the manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison. Assembled in Richardson’s 
‘grotto of instruction’, six of the novelist’s admirers sit in elegant attitudes and 
listen to the latest instalment of Sir Charles’s adventures, probably after many 
long hours spent both writing letters to the author about his hero’s marriage 
and reading his replies. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), printer, novelist, com-
pulsive author of volumes of letters to friends and acquaintances, was from the 
early 1740s onwards both at the centre and part of various networks dominated 
by domestic as well as scholarly and literary activities and mainly sustained by 
correspondence (Barbauld 2011; Carroll 1964). His circles consisted of poets, 
scholars and especially of educated gentry women, such as lady Dorothy Brad-
shaigh, Sarah Wescomb, Anne Donnellan, Susanna Highmore, Hester Mulso, 
Anne Dewes, who were the protagonists of a lifelong commitment to Richardson 
and the familiar letter (Eaves and Kimpel 1971).1

As is well known, in the age of the Republic of Letters, letter writing came 
into prominence for social and cultural reasons, as well as purely literary ones. An 
emblem of the private domain, the letter performed, in fact, its actual functions 

Journal of Early Modern Studies, n. 3 (2014), pp. 173-198
http://www.fupress.com/bsfm-jems

ISSN 2279-7149 (online) 
 2013 Firenze University 



174 donatella montini

as an agent of the public exchange of knowledge, presenting itself as a peculiar 
hybrid of the personal and the public, as a text concerning both the private and 
the public sphere, ‘as precious scraps of handwritten paper intended for a single 
reader, still bearing their broken seals, scrawled directions, and postmarks, and, at 
the same time, as neatly printed pages circulating in multiple copies and marketed 
to an avid reading public’ (Cook 1996, 2). The introduction and development 
of reliable postal services favoured the growth of ‘real communities of adepts’ 
who used the interactiveness of correspondence as an excellent means for the 
exchange of views and factual information (Gotti 2006). Letter writing hand-
books, scientific treatises and political pamphlets, botanical reports and poetical 
epistles were just a few examples of the many fields in which communication was 
conveyed through letters: Newton’s studies on optics were circulated by means 
of a series of letters to the Royal Society, and texts submitted to the Philosophical 
Transactions, the Society’s journal, were published as letters. 

If communal correspondence within the scientific circles served to spread 
views and experiments, or to widen the community (Gotti 2006), the correspond-
ence of Richardson’s networks was mainly focused on domestic and intellectual 
affairs, as well as on the discussion of social and ethical values. Moreover, in 
Richardson’s and his correspondents’ epistles, which he began to collect in 1741, 
the letters and the people mentioned are also intertwined with the letters and the 
characters of his novels, each group participating in the universe of the other, and 
affecting the language of the other. 

In the light of the social network theory, which investigates linguistic vari-
ations and changes influenced by discourse communities, the present article 
aims at highlighting some aspects of the structure and content of Richardson’s 
networks as recorded by their epistolary exchanges. Against a cultural and lit-
erary background which presented a major development of reading practices, 
Richardson’s unique and conscious encouragement of his readers to contribute 
to the factual making of his epistolary novels has been studied and interpreted 
in various ways, as a desire to control and reform reading, or to lead his readers 
to moral regeneration, or to respond to a competitive market (Whyman 2007; 
Keymer 1992). Surprisingly, especially considering an author like Richardson, 
what has received less attention are the linguistic and stylistic strategies employed 
to pursue his moral and commercial project. 

My analysis is grounded in a historical perspective and I shall try to contextual-
ize the letters and illustrate the main problems related to Richardson’s correspond-
ence as far as preservation, location and reliability are concerned. Then, I shall 
present his correspondents and his network clusters and finally I will concentrate on 
the question of discourse styles and practices that may be associated with particular 
registers or genres (Tieken-Boon 2000 and 2008; Sairio 2009b), thus investigating 
the ways in which the language of these letters may correlate with the topic they 
deal with (Tieken-Boon 2009; Fitzmaurice 2002). In doing so, I shall provide a 
qualitative analysis of some extracts of Richardson’s out- and in-letters,2 focusing on 



175language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

instances of stylistic strategies which, in most cases, aim at including the addressee’s 
utterance within the addresser’s epistolary communication. 

2. The Corpus: Historical Issues, Methodological and Epistemological Problems

2.1 Richardson’s Correspondence

The story of Richardson’s private correspondence is long and tormented. At the 
same time as he was involved in the complex gestation of his novels, at least of 
Clarissa and Grandison, Richardson began an intense epistolary exchange with a 
large number of correspondents. The undertaking as a whole was so great that he 
himself thought of it as a work in itself. He first mentions his project to collect 
and publish his own private letters in his letter to Thomas Edwards dated 27 Janu-
ary 1755: his aim was the pleasure of reading them for himself and for his family 
members after his death. The project, he writes, will involve an accurate selection, 
with the consequent elimination of irrelevant material and a precise request to the 
various correspondents for authorisation to publish them (Carroll 1964, 317-318).

The decision to implement this plan sounds like a real undertaking to those 
who know how much effort Richardson put into his prolific correspondence 
with friends and acquaintances, mainly on the subject of his fictional writing; 
there came a point when his friend Joseph Spence was prompted to urge him 
to ‘take up a resolution (which perhaps may be new to you) of neither trusting 
others, nor distrusting yourself too much’ (Barbauld 2011, I, 320). However, 
Richardson continued his activity undaunted, weaving a voluminous amount 
of correspondence with a large number of acquaintances, all members of the 
intellectual bourgeoisie, and, among these, many young women. 

There are few extant letters dating from the period before Pamela, and 
information about their story is learnt indirectly from subsequent ones (see the 
letter to Johannes Stinstra dated 2nd June 1753, Carroll 1964, 228-235). The 
first letter to have been published is probably the one Richardson wrote to his 
nephew, Thomas Verren Richardson, an apprentice printer, in 1732. The epistle, 
full of advice and instructions, was revised and published in The Apprentice’s Vade 
Mecum: or Young Man’s Companion (1733), after the premature death of the 
boy. From 1734 onwards Richardson cultivated a constant and intense exchange 
with the doctor and literary man George Cheyne, one of the frankest and in-
deed most pungent critics of Pamela and its sequel. On the death of Cheyne, in 
1743, Richardson had already collected eighty-two letters and had copied them 
into a separate exercise book, complete with a preface dated 11th August 1744.3 
Another important correspondent of the first period is the poet, playwright and 
critic Aaron Hill, with whom Richardson continued to correspond until 1750. 
Some letters dedicated to various aspects of Clarissa, starting from the length 
of the plot, were included in a collection in 1753, published after the death of 
Hill in order to procure funds to support his three daughters.



176 donatella montini

It was after the publication of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-54) that Richardson 
began the systematic organisation of his correspondence with a view to publishing 
it. He organised it into volumes and carried out a general revision, which involved 
modifying texts, eliminating entire parts, even changing the names of the corre-
spondents: Aaron Hill and his daughters, Edward Young, Thomas Edwards, Sarah 
Chapone, Sarah Westcomb, naturally Lady Dorothy Bradshaigh, and others. The 
letter to Lady Bradshaigh dated 19th November 1757 bears witness to the effort and 
investment that Richardson seems to bestow on this undertaking (Carroll 1964, 
335). It is the founding letter of the Epistolary, and the pride, even the vanity of 
the author emerge clearly: private correspondence has to be arranged according to 
organisational and narrative dynamics similar to those of novels, he writes, and a 
perspective of critical writing is added lucidly. 

In 1757 the German bookseller Erasmus Reich proposed to publish a 
selection of letters, but Richardson replied with drastic requests: publication 
only in German, after formal permission requested by the novelist from the 
correspondents, anonymity. Nothing came of the project, nor of his nephew 
William Richardson’s proposal to publish the selection in 1781, twenty years 
after the death of the novelist. It was only in 1804, after the death of Richardson’s 
last daughter, Anne, and of all the correspondents, except Susanna Highmore, 
that the letters were sold to the publisher Richard Phillips who appointed the 
writer and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld to edit the correspondence, which 
came out in six volumes.

The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, Author of Pamela, Clarissa, and 
Sir Charles Grandison. Selected from the Original Manuscripts, Bequeathed by 
Him to His Family, To which are Prefixed, a Biographical Account of that Author 
and Observations on his Writings by Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1804) is still today 
the richest and most complete collection of Richardson’s letters. The volumes 
contain approximately 400 letters, a third of which written by Richardson (but 
it has been established that 560 more letters by Richardson and 1060 letters by 
his correspondents still exist).4 The main and most serious criticism that may be 
directed at Barbauld certainly concerns philological accuracy; the editor herself 
states in the Introduction that the choice of letters is dictated only by her own taste, 
guided by ‘the necessary office of selection’ (Barbauld 2011, I, ccviii). Barbauld 
inherited material on which Richardson had been the first to exercise the role of 
editor, and it must also be remembered that the editorial style typical of the period 
followed very different criteria from those used today; nevertheless, Barbauld’s 
editorial freedom is stunning: she shortens texts, omits dates or transcribes others 
erroneously, she attributes letters to the wrong correspondents, changes spelling 
and punctuation, summarises a number of letters into a single letter, without ever 
indicating this type of intervention on her part (McCarthy 2001).5 However, the 
letters chosen by Barbauld are the ones to be remembered, and precisely by virtue 
of the procedures of the period, when the editor had become and must therefore 
be considered as ‘a mediating author’ (Palander-Collin 2010). 



177language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

Other collections, not as rich as that of 1804, though perhaps more accurate, 
include George Cheyne’s letters edited by C.F.Mullett, the 1969 edition of letters 
to and from Johannes Stinstra edited by William Slattery (Slattery 1969), and 
the important collection of 111 letters from Edward Young (Pettit, ed., 1971). 
John Carroll’s 1964 edition deserves a special mention: he proposes a selection 
of 128 letters, all by Richardson, in chronological order, with accurate transcrip-
tions, and based on handwritten sources, wherever possible. Only a part of these 
coincides with Barbauld’s letters and the attention paid by Carroll to letters with 
a literary theme makes the collection all the more valuable, since it makes it pos-
sible to trace Richardson’s critical stance regarding his own writing and that of 
his contemporaries directly. 

There still remain approximately seven hundred handwritten letters, some 
of which are either kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum or scattered in vari-
ous collections. It is also for this reason that critical works dedicated to this cor-
respondence are very few – Malvin Zirker’s pages dating back to the middle of 
the Sixties being, perhaps, the only specific essay (Zirker 1966).6 What is more, 
many of the studies related to letters are based on electronic corpora, a resource 
which is in fact unavailable for Richardson’s letters.7 

In the early twenty-first century an ambitious project has been undertaken 
by Cambridge University Press with the aim to collect all of Richardson’s letters 
and those of his correspondents, with Peter Sabor and Tom Keymer as general 
editors, thus giving readers a chance to read Richardson without any intermedia-
tion (Sabor 1989; Tieken-Boon 1991).8  

2.2 Richardson’s Network Clusters

The decade from 1742 to 1754, in which Richardson wrote and published his 
two bulkiest novels, Clarissa (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753), is also 
the period in which he increased his epistolary exchanges with groups of friends 
and acquaintances. 

Richardson’s collected correspondence shows that a few network clusters 
can be identified; the strength of their ties, as well as their density and multi-
plexity vary over time: the connections between network members overlap and 
are more or less frequent and extended (Sairio 2009a).9 Some of the members 
were invited to Richardson’s houses, in London, at Salisbury Court and at 
North End, and later at Parson’s Green, but since the novelist’s writings and 
opinions were almost the only subject treated in the letters and the roles played 
by the writers did not change, Richardson’s circles may be considered a closed 
network, in that members were accepted and encouraged to participate only if 
they satisfied precise prerequisites.    

Aaron Hill (1685-1750), who lived in Plainstow, and the poet Edward 
Young (1681-1765), who came from Hertfordshire, were certainly Richard-
son’s chief advisers during the composition of Clarissa, and Thomas Edwards 



178 donatella montini

was his closest friend at about the time of the composition of Grandison.10 
Edwards’s relationship with Richardson is exemplary as far as the construction 
of ties in Richardson’s networks is concerned. Edwards lived in Turrick, near 
Ellesborough in Buckinghamshire; he was a landscape gardener, and a bachelor, 
ten years younger than Richardson; his first letter to Richardson, full of praise 
for Clarissa, dates back to the end of 1748, but by April 1750 he was visiting 
North End, and by June he had been at Salisbury Court several times. He was 
then introduced at the houses of Richardson’s friends Mrs. Donnellan and Miss 
Mulso, and in a few months his letters present passages that express opinions 
on various members of the community and show his intimate knowledge of 
Richardson’s friends’ lives.

Other correspondents of Richardson’s networks were the grammarian 
Salomon Lowe, the painter Joseph Highmore, Edward Moore, Stephen Duck, 
‘the thresher poet’, Ralph Allen, Samuel Lobb, Colley Cibber, Samuel Johnson, 
William Warburton: they visited Richardson’s homes and, both as senders and 
addressees, were among his most fervent correspondents and protagonists of 
his writing strategies. 

Female correspondents, however, played a different part in Richardson’s 
personal epistolary story. Biographers and critics agree in describing Richardson 
as ‘a shy, diffident man, who found it difficult to meet people socially... he was 
unable to meet such men as Garrick, Johnson, or Fielding on equal terms, and he 
retreated to the more congenial circle of feminine admirers and mild-mannered 
men who were willing to pay court to him’ (Zirker 1966, 85; McKillop 1960; 
Eaves and Kimpel 1971). 

Actually, women dominate Richardson’s correspondence only after the com-
pletion of Clarissa, but the company of young women, his ‘adopted daughters’, 
as he called them, who were encouraged to write regular letters to their ‘Papa’, 
is a recurrent trait in his life: he used to reproach the reluctant writers, solicit-
ing their letters even when they were his guests, in his own house, at Parson’s 
Green, or at North End.11 A few correspondents may be singled out: the most 
important one is certainly Lady Dorothy Bradshaigh, his ‘ideal reader’, who 
started their correspondence ‘in disguise’ under the pseudonym of Belfour and 
who never broke off their exchanges till Richardson’s death. Miss Sarah West-
comb and Miss Frances Grainger were two more of his favourites. Sarah is the 
addressee of one of the most famous familiar letters dating back to 1746, an 
actual ‘ode to correspondence’, in which Richardson dictates the rules and the 
meaning of communal letter writing, celebrating correspondence as a form of 
communication to be preferred to conversation, defining it as ‘the cement of 
friendship’ and considering it a physical substitute for the correspondent herself.

What charming advantages, what high delights, my dear, good, and condescending 
Miss Westcomb, flow from the familiar correspondences of friendly and undesigning 
hearts... This correspondence is, indeed, the cement of friend ship: it is friendship avowed 



179language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

under hand and seal: friend ship upon bond, as I may say: more pure, yet more ardent, 
and less broken in upon, than personal conversation can be even amongst the most pure, 
because of the deliberation it allows, from the very preparation to, and action of writing. 

A proof of this appears in the letter before me! – Every line of it flowing with that 
artless freedom, that noble con sciousness of honourable meaning, which shine in every 
feature, in every sentiment, in every expression of the fair writer!

While I read it, I have you before me in person: I converse with you... I see 
you, I sit with you, I talk with you; I read to you, I stop to hear your sentiments, in 
the summer-house: your smiling obligingness, your polite and easy expression, even 
your undue diffidence, are all in my eye and my ear as I read. – Who than [sic!] shall 
decline the converse of the pen? The pen that makes distance, presence; and brings 
back to sweet remembrance all the delights of presence; which makes even presence 
but body, while absence becomes the soul; and leaves no room for the intrusion of 
breakfast-calls, or dinner or supper direction, which often broke in upon us. (Barbauld 
2011, III, 244-249)

The Collier sisters and Sarah Fielding, the novelist’s sister, formed another cluster: 
their correspondence covers approximately a decade from the end of the 1740s 
to 1757. Clarissa is the main subject of their letters and both Jane Collier and 
Sarah Fielding were among the defenders of the heroine and her behaviour.

Finally, two main female circles have to be taken into consideration, 
and it is a matter of age which distinguishes them and determines the kind 
of relationship and the style of writing. The first group, his ‘adopted sisters’, 
was formed by Mrs. Mary Delany, Mrs. Anne Dewes, who was Mrs. Delany’s 
sister, Mrs. Anne Donnellan, Miss Isabella Sutton, and Mrs. Sarah Chapone, 
all friends of Mrs. Delany. The second circle, more closely connected with 
the composition of Sir Charles Grandison, was formed by younger women, 
like Susanna Highmore, Hester Mulso and Mary Prescott. All these women 
knew each other and were all bluestockings, interested in conversation and 
art and literature, though intimacy was greater within each group rather than 
between the groups; last but not least, all of them possessed what Susan Why-
man calls ‘epistolary literacy’, ‘a skill that Samuel Richardson will manipulate 
to his advantage’ (2007, 579).12 

2.3 Methodological and Epistemological Problems, or ‘Making the Best Use of Bad Data’

The most effective research model, which helps in the study of the potential 
consequences of discourse communities both on a linguistic and a social level, is 
the Social Network Analysis (SNA). In Sairio’s words, if a social network can be 
defined as ‘a dynamic web of people who are connected to each other in various 
capacities’, SNA studies ‘those connections and their influence on individual 
behaviour. The value of social network analysis in linguistics derives from its 
focus on the structures of relationships that have the potential to shed light on 
language change and linguistic influences’ (Sairio 2009a, 108). 



180 donatella montini

The ‘bad data problem’, however, is the key challenge for historical linguists 
(Labov 1994; Nevalainen 1999), especially when working on letters which are con-
sidered a patchy source, because of their state of preservation or because the reciprocal 
exchanges are not always available. This is certainly so for Richardson’s letters, lost 
or scattered in various collections, printed and at times altered, and even rephrased. 

That a complete inventory of the letters of Richardson and his correspond-
ents would be of invaluable importance for Richardsonian studies is indisputable. 
However, one cannot help nurturing a certain amount of scepticism towards a 
hypothetical corpus sine glossa which would give the reader the impression of a 
presumed purity of an original text, obtained following a rigorous and complete 
chronological sequence and also through the supposed real replies of Richardson’s 
correspondents. Besides the controversial completeness and philological accuracy of 
the texts collected, which have already been compromised by the intervention of the 
author himself and of various editors, my claim is that the basic problem remains 
hermeneutic, linked as it is to the very identity of the eighteenth-century familiar 
letter as a text type, in which the truth-fiction borderline is much more blurred than 
that to be expected from a product in non fiction prose. The epistemological statute 
of the 18th century letter is based on public and private dynamics and its objectiv-
ity and authenticity of discourse may be illusory, in that, even from a linguistic 
perspective, letters were not ‘thoughtless outpourings’ but the result of considerable 
effort (Anderson et al., eds, 1966, 273; Cattaneo 1999), especially in the case of 
highly literate writers, such as scholars or public figures. Epistolary communication 
provided an ambiguous message of which authors seemed to be vey much aware of: 
spontaneity and immediacy were presented as the distinguishing traits of a private 
letter and thus Johnson writes to Mrs Thrale (27 October 1777): ‘In a Man’s Letters 
you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, 
whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process’ (Johnson 
1952, 228). But it is again Johnson who, apparently contradicting himself, reveals: 
‘There is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and 
sophistication than epistolary intercourse. A friendly letter is a calm and deliberate 
performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and surely no man sits 
down to depreciate by design his own character’ (Johnson 1905, 207). Eventually, a 
letter is a rhetorical act, an artefact, both in content and in style, as distant as possible 
from the image of the letter as foenestra in pectore. 

This is all the more the case if we move from a single letter to an entire corre-
spondence, whose meaning is redefined by other aspects: a correspondence cannot 
be read as ‘a mere number of letters which remain as they are and whose significance 
remains unchanged with their re-inscription in a wider text: it is a collection of letters, 
or rather the fruit of a narrativisation which entails the transformation of the per-
formative aspect of the letter into a narration’ (Locatelli 1992, 350; my translation), 
shifting thereby the interest from historic-epistemological to semiotic-structural.

Last but not least, it might also be claimed that Richardson’s case suggests other 
aspects to be taken into consideration by virtue of his profession, which affected his 



181language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

very identity: Richardson was a printer at heart and, as recorded in his biographies, 
his activity determined his whole life. In his first arrangement of the correspondence 
he had already modified the supposed originals, and it may not be far from the truth 
to argue that his manuscript letters were literally conceived in print.

For all these reasons, I need to ‘make the best use of bad data’, and I will thus 
rely on the extant collections of Richardson’s letters, primarily on the Barbauld and 
Carroll editions. 

3. Language and Letters

Typesetter, printer, editor, author, Samuel Richardson covered all the necessary roles 
and stages which make up the writing process. However, he has also been studied 
and appreciated as an innovator of language as far as grammatical, syntactic and 
lexical aspects are concerned (Tieken-Boon 1987): Dr. Johnson acknowledged 
him as a ‘word-maker’, admired his ability to transmit feelings through words 
(Eaves & Kimpel 1971, 338), and repeatedly quoted him in his Dictionary (1755).

Richardson’s influence should be understood in the light of his social and 
socio-linguistic collocation. Geographically and socially mobile, he belonged 
to a lower-class family, ‘a Family of middling Note’, as he writes to Johannes 
Stinstra.13 He moved to London from Macworth, Derbyshire, and, though the 
son of a joiner, he became a wealthy and established printer, and the owner of 
his own printing house. As a printer artisan who, therefore, belonged to the 
entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, Richardson did not have a classical education: in 
his letters he defines himself as a businessman with all the duties and limits that 
this entails. At the same time, however, his role as an author brought him into 
contact with the languages and styles of the upper class, with people and per-
sonalities who were to become models for the favourite characters in his novels. 
This is a recurrent concern in his correspondence and when writing to ladies 
who are members of the aristocracy, he often takes pains to ask for advice about 
expressions considered appropriate for their environment. 

Sharing the background of the less affluent classes but elevated by both his 
entrepreneurial and his literary successes, Richardson is part of an interesting 
socio-linguistic class which straddles various sectors: he is thus the bearer of a 
linguistic in-between-ness characterised by profound insecurity and conservatism 
but, in fact, also by the possibility of being seen as a language innovator.14 From 
a socio-linguistic point of view, Richardson is an outsider and belongs to a cat-
egory able to convey linguistic changes, which are not possible within groups 
in which linguistic norms are already consolidated: innovations usually come 
from the margins, from those grey areas in which bonds and ties are at their 
weakest (Milroy 1980). Tieken-Boon investigates Richardson’s position as an 
outsider in Samuel Johnson’s circle, where the only strong tie he cultivated was 
with Johnson himself, who showed great appreciation towards the novelist, his 
works, and his ethical values (Tieken-Boon 1991, 2009). As a member on the 



182 donatella montini

margins of Johnson’s network, Richardson was able to play the role of the actual 
innovator, while Johnson was the early adopter, ‘the innovation being adopted 
by Dr Johnson and spread as a result of his prestige among the members of his 
group’ (Tieken-Boon 1991, 49-50).15

In spite of all this, the potential influence of Richardson’s style on his cor-
respondents’ familiar letters, and the impact of his letters as far as his epistolary 
stylistic strategies are concerned have been largely neglected and are worthy of 
investigation. Among similar examples of epistolary liaisons where almost only 
one side of the writing couple may be read, Richardson offers a special and 
favourable case in that his personal letters may be defined as less one-sided than 
others. What I claim is that Richardson develops linguistic and stylistic strategies 
aiming both at an interpersonal and linguistic involvement of the addressee: in 
doing so he enhances the conversational quality of epistolary exchanges and, 
ultimately, teaches a grammar of affectivity, which had quite a few enthusiastic 
learners, especially among his female correspondents. 

In the following paragraphs, I have selected three correspondents in order to 
present three representative examples of those stylistic strategies and show how 
Richardson draws the addressee towards his side of the epistolary communication.

3.1 Edward Moore: Towards a Dramatic Style

Along with the issues typical of the familiar letter, such as long descriptions of 
daily routines, or discussions dedicated to the relationship between parents and 
children, or to the signs of friendship, the most recurrent topic debated among 
Richardson’s correspondents was literary writing, or rather Richardson’s literary 
writing. He was the focus or ego of those circles because of his innovatory strategy 
in planning the plots of his novels through the help and practical advice of his 
correspondents. The personalities and sentiments of his characters were debated 
thanks to the exchange of letters which embedded long excerpts of ‘dialogues in 
letters’ among the characters of his novels, to be commented, amended, abridged, 
or otherwise changed. His correspondents were well aware of the fact that the 
man they exchanged letters with was a novelist and their exchanges resulted not 
only in examples of literary criticism ante litteram, but also of creative writing 
in that the writer was expected not only to discuss the actions and words of the 
characters, but also to contribute to the very writing of the narration. 

The writer was called on to structure his/her own discourse in an appropriate 
manner and style which required meeting precise stylistic criteria and in doing so 
he/she also defined and drew the boundaries of a precise community. This pro-
cedure resulted in a particular epistolary production, a sort of subgenre endowed 
with its own peculiar features, both from a stylistic and a pragmatic perspective.

In a letter to Edward Moore, Richardson gives us one of the most effective 
examples into the procedure of close reading and creative writing that the novel-
ist practised with his correspondents (Carroll 1964, 118-122; see Appendix).16 



183language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

The subject of the exchange is the episode of Lovelace’s death in Clarissa. As is 
well known, Lovelace is the rake and libertine of the story, who abducts and 
rapes Clarissa; he dies in a duel with Clarissa’s cousin, Morden, and the event is 
described by De la Tour, Lovelace’s valet. Moore is objecting to the very writing 
strategy adopted by Richardson and in particular to the voice and point of view 
chosen to tell the story; Richardson replies, confirming his decisions and giving 
reasons for this.17

The addressee’s letter, mentioned in the very first lines (‘You have done me 
great Honour, and given me great Pleasure, by yours of the 23rd’), is brought liter-
ally inside the page: the words of the addressee are quoted in this case by a tagged 
direct speech, in order to be commented on, point by point: 

[1] You say, Sir, that ‘Lovelace shd have given Belford an acct. of his own Remorses after 
the Duel, or, if that had been improper Morden might have visited him privately, and 
have written the acct. himself.’ Run thro’ the Body, delirious, vomiting Blood, the first 
was impossible: To the second I answer – Morden was wounded himself – They fought in 
the Austrian dominion: It was concerted that the survivor to avoid public animadversions 
shd. make off to the Venetian territories. 

[2] You wish, Sir, that ‘this acct. had been given by any but a Servant.’ Shall we suppose 
that Mowbray or Tourville had been sent abroad with him (Belford was too much engaged) 
Mowbray wd. have given a Brutal or Farcical acct., if I had respected his Character, as 
he did of Lovelace’s delirious behaviour on the first communication of Clarissa’s death... 

[3] ‘The triumphant Death of Clarissa, (you say, Sir) needed a more particular contrast 
than in the Deaths of Belton & Sinclair.’ – I have a few things to offer on this head, after 
I have observed that Lovelace’s Remorses are so very strongly painted by himself in Letter 
CXI a very few days before the Duel, that there cou’d not be a necessity for any persons 
giving an acct. of them after in was fought. … ‘Then seeming ejaculation, – then speaking 
inwardly but so as not to be understood’ – how affecting such a circumstance in such a Man! 
And at last with his wonted haughtiness of spirit – LET THIS EXPIATE all his apparent 
Invocation and address to the SUPREME. Have I not then given rather a dreadful than a 
hopeful Exit, with respect to the Futurity, to the unhappy Lovelace! (Carroll 1964, 118-122)

This is a strategy Richardson usually follows as a reaction to the addressee’s 
absence typical of epistolary form. In this special case, however, rather than 
a confrontation with the interlocutor’s ‘here and now’ world, the pragmatic 
procedures of the letter focus on fictional plots, and on the ‘here and now’ of 
the fictional characters, according to ideological and cultural schemata, appar-
ently shared by both correspondents (Fitzmaurice 2002). The writer seems to 
appeal to the reader by quoting Lovelace’s or Morden’s voices from the novel, 
in an interplay between orality features and literary dialogues. Thus, if the sub-
ject of the letter is closely connected to the written mode, what cannot escape 
notice is that writing is meant and used as a help to informal conversational 
traits, such as the use of abbreviations (‘shd’, ‘acct.’, ‘thro’, ‘wd.’, ‘cou’d’), which 



184 donatella montini

mimic conversational speed, the capitalization as a form of emphasis (ex. 3), 
the frequency of questions, and, especially in this case, the embedding of the 
characters’ exclamations.   

In a letter to Hester Mulso dealing with a similar topic – the plot of Sir 
Charles Grandison and a possible unhappy ending – Richardson sketches dif-
ferent scenarios and he does so by increasing aspects of face-to-face interaction:

June 20, 1752
[4] My dear Miss Mulso, ‘won’t I let you know when Harriet is married?’ And you really 
expect no back-stroke of fortune? All to be halcyon to the end of chapter? Think you 
not that Harriet can shine by her behaviour in some very deep distress? –Would you, if 
the thing be ever published, have people be inquiring which is sir Charles Grandison’s 
house in St. James’s Square? and so forth? Poor Sir Charles Grandison! Would it not 
be right to remove him? – But shall we first marry him? – Shall we shew Harriet, after 
a departure glorious to the hero, in her vidual glory?... There, my Miss Mulso!—And 
the work to be published piecemeal!—What a surprise would this great catastrophe 
occasion! (Carroll 1964, 215-216)

Apparently he writes as he would talk, and markers of interactive-involved dis-
course are all present (Biber 1988): address terms, especially the second person 
pronouns, the use of the inclusive we so as to establish a sense of cooperation 
and an ideological bond with the recipient, temporal and spatial deixis related 
to the time and space both of the addressee and of the fictional characters, in 
other parts of the letter the imperative construction, but especially questions 
and exclamations, an add-on strategy typical of spoken language.

3.2 Sarah Westcomb: October 1750 - January 1751

The pragmatic, communicative function of the letter can be compared to other 
forms of interaction, and I agree with Fitzmaurice who points out that ‘although 
the letter is patently not conversation on paper, epistolary discourse does imitate 
some of the conversation’s characteristics’ (Fitzmaurice 2002, 233): like conver-
sation, for example, the letter determines the obligation to reply (the lack of a 
reply acquiring a value analogous to silence). Nevertheless, considering that the 
specific medium of this text type remains writing, many of the features defined 
as oral should be regarded as interactive (Nurmi and Palander-Collin 2008). 

Given this double nature of letters, as a genre embedding both writing- 
and oral-centred traits, Richardson’s correspondence displays a wide range of 
interesting linguistic choices. The syntax of his letters is generally made up of a 
heavy hypotactic structure, very long sentences, a disjointed relationship between 
the verb and the subject of the action, to the point of making the reader forget 
who the agent of the utterance is. In this context, however, the letters to female 
correspondents show great differences in register, and Richardson tends to shift 
to significant oral forms – and the women also seem to do this with him.18



185language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

In fact, the addressees’ replies vary in style: parameters of age and power 
relationship seem to affect the reciprocal styles. While correspondents of the 
same age as Richardson, like Mrs. Donnellan, or Mrs. Delany insist on a formal 
tone, the younger ones tend to align theirs to more informal conversational traits. 

Richardson’s correspondence with Sarah Westcomb provides a peculiar 
example. Unlike most of Richardson’s female correspondents, Miss Westcomb 
was not a bluestocking, and the subjects and style of her letters are ordinary 
and domestic as well as repetitious and trivial.19

 Richardson seems very fond of her, ‘in spite of or because of her utter 
lack of intellectual pretensions’ (Eaves and Kimpel 1971, 199) and this suggests 
precise power roles in a relationship where he is addressed as the ‘dear Papa’ 
and she as ‘my ever-amiable daughter’. The five letters exchanged between Oc-
tober 1750 and January 1751 (see Tab.1) are a masterpiece of interaction, of 
conversation in writing, especially because the major subject concerns a quarrel 
between the two about Sarah’s supposed negligence towards ‘her Papa’ while on 
holiday, visiting a Mrs. Jodrell at Ankerwyke (Barbauld 2011, III, 281-310): 
in Richardson’s world this meant she had not written any letters or notes for a 
few days, as she admits ingenuously:

Enfield, October 15, 1750
The only reason my dear papa has not yet heard from me is, that I have been returned from 
Ankerwyke but a few days, my mamma’s amended health after my leaving her permitting 
my long absence; and while from home I had not leisure to write. (Barbauld 2011, 281)

out letters in letters location
March 6 1746-47 B III 239-243
No date B III 243-249
No date B III250- 255

Enfield, June 27 1750 B III 256-261
London, July 2 1750 B III 261-270

Enfield, July 27 1750 B III 271-275
August 6 1750 B III 275-281

Enfield, Oct 15 1750 B III 281-285
Nov 1 1750 B III 285-293

Enfield, Nov 23 1750 B III 294-298
London, Dec 5 1750 B III 298-305

Jan 25 1750-51 B III 306-310
No date B III 311-319 B III 311-319

Enfield, June 15 1754 B III 320- 321
London, Oct 22 1754 B III 322-323

Kentchurch, Aug 1757  
(signs as S. Scudamore)

B III 324-327

September 12, 1757 B III 328-329
Kentchurch, Mar 12, 1758  
(signs as S. Scuda-more)

B III 330-332

Tab. 1 - Correspondence of Mr. Richardson with Miss Sarah Westcomb in Barbauld’s edition



186 donatella montini

Opening and closing formulae are an important clue to the nature of the 
relationship between sender and addressee (Tieken-Boon 2009).20 In my case 
study the variations of the remarks introducing the address correlate with the 
degree of informality between Richardson and Sarah (see Tab. 2), and closing 
salutations are used to add new issues to the quarrel offering an interesting 
interplay of mitigating and non-mitigating disagreement strategies:     

Place and time Addresser > 
addressee

Opening 
Formulae

Closing Formulae

Enfield Oct 15 
1750

W > R … my dear 
papa

... and am, with all sincerity and 
regard, Your very affectionate 
and obliged S. Westcomb

Nov 1 1750 
Enfield

R > W -------------- … and believe me to be, My half, 
my almost- half, good girl, Your 
truly affectionate and Faithful 
humble ser-vant, S. Richardson

Nov 23 1750 
London

W > R -------------- … you should at last censure 
the head, than the heart, of, dear 
papa, Your still very affectionate, 
yet hardly-treated, S. Westcomb

Dec 5 1750 R > W … my 
dear Miss 
Westcomb

… or else you will add a 
concern to my heart, greater 
than even any you could give 
or have given to it by your 
neglects of, My dear Miss 
Westcomb, Your truly paternal 
friend, S. Richard-son

Jan 25 1750-51 W > R Dear Sir All that I now beg is, that you’d 
be assured that you can never 
be, intentionally, neglected 
or slighted by, good Sir, Your 
affectionate and filial friend, 
and obliged humble servant, S. 
Westcomb 

Tab. 2 - Opening and closing formulae Richardson/Westcomb Oct. 1750-Jan. 1751

When the quarrel begins, Richardson seems to increase the interpersonal 
involvement strategies of the addressee and of her discourse, and the second-
person pronouns used to appeal to the addressee are higher in frequency 
than first-person pronouns (ex. 5). The addressee’s countermove results in 
her standing back from the accusations and in deploying ego-involvement 
strategies, a long sequence of sentences whose subject is only the speaker: ‘I 
sat down pretty easy’, ‘I thought indeed...’, ‘I ought to have wrote’, ‘I sent a 
letter’, ‘I have been so much vexed’, ‘I own I was very unwilling to answer’, 
but concluding with the classic metaphor of ink and poison: the emphatic 
imperative calls the addressee back (‘Do, pray Sir, send me...’) only to lead to 
a final if unexpected insult from the ‘condescending’ Sarah Westcomb! (ex. 5a)



187language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

    Nov. 1, 1750 
[5] … You know, my dear, how ready I held myself to attend you to Ankerwyke: 
you know what a piece of self-denial I gave myself, and what a regret your mamma 
Richardson, to consent to part with you, for your own satisfaction and pleasure, days 
before you would have left us. And, on this occasion, I could almost remind you what 
a painful child you were to me the Saturday preceding, by your pretty volatility and 
heedlessness. (Barbauld 2011, 286)

Nov. 23, 1750
[5a] But patience will hold no longer: my vexation rises to my pen; and, for relief, 
must throw itself off this way. I have heard of dipping one’s pen in gall: O that I had 
a little gall by me now, instead of harmless ink! Do, pray Sir, send me some against 
next time; as you have, I believe, to spare. (Barbauld 2011, 295)

In another letter written by Richardson, the conventional signs of writing 
give way to a dialogic mode which includes the addressee within the sender’s 
message. Features of natural conversation increase both in the form of hedges 
or pragmatic particles such as ‘you know’, ‘I mean’, or in the form of speech 
acts such as direct appeals to his recipient, long lists of questions, at times 
rhetorical (ex. 6), answers to questions. Entire paragraphs copied from the 
letters of his correspondents are inserted into his epistle so that they can be 
debated and contradicted as in a face-to-face conversation (ex. 7).  

[6] … You are not in fault at all!—Not you!—Let me put a few questions to you?
Don’t you think I love you dearly? With a truly paternal love?
You know I do, you answer. Yes, my dear, all that know me know I do.
And don’t you know how solicitous I was to make an opportunity to attend you at 
Ankerwyke?
And had you not opportunity to write when Mrs. Jodrell retired to write? When Miss 
Johnson retired to write to her papa?—Will you say no? Did not the former good lady 
remind you that you should? My concern at your slight has made me inquisitive, I can 
tell you that. And what then could you want by inclination? (Barbauld 2011, 299)

[7] ... But behold! (Some comfort though slighted!) on the 16th of October in the year 
of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and fifty, come a letter dated the day before 
from Enfield, to acquaint me, ‘that the only reason that a certain person’s dear papa (I 
say, dear papa!) had not heard from her, was, that she was but a few days before returned 
from Ankerwyke!’—The very reason, in short, that he should have heard of her, and 
the rather, because she promised by word of mouth, as well as by written note, that he 
should!—And a further reason urged, that of her mamma’s amended health! Astonish-
ing! […] Yet still, you say, all was charming, catch or not catch!—for now-and-then, for 
change, you took a breakfast at Sunning-Hill, and a dance too!’—I heard of you from that 
place! I did so!—’Returned more gay (and more forgetful of course!) than you went! (How 
could either papa or promise be remembered, thus gaily diverted?) Especially when to 
these amusements, these charming amusements, succeeded converse, music, working, (Did 



188 donatella montini

you say working?) reading!—(Ay, reading!)—And a rubber at whist (No questtion!) [sic] 
concluded the night.’ (Barbauld 2011, 289-290; my emphasis)

[8] ... I am accused of playing off a sheet full of witticism (Witticism, Miss W.! Very 
reverent indeed!), which you, poor girl, can’t tell what to do with. Very well, Miss W. 
But I did not expect—But no matter—What have I done with my handkerchief? 
I—I—I did not expect—But no matter, Miss W. (Barbauld 2011, 303) 

In spite of a partial reported speech, the words of the correspondent literally 
merge with those of the writer, sometimes preceded and followed by inverted 
commas, the fragile sign of a tagged direct speech, which is then transformed into 
indirect speech by the syntax of the verb. In this way, by engaging the physical, 
literal presence of the ‘you’ which is necessary in the epistolary form, Richardson 
innovates and exalts procedures which were conventional in the period.

Moreover, the emphasis on word order, lexical selection, broken and un-
finished sentences, elimination of verbs, repetition of words (as if mimicking a 
stuttering voice!), exclamation marks and dashes adds a major contribution to 
stress the oral quality of the text. Parenthetic comments are frequently used to 
counterpoint the excerpts quoted (ex. 7 and 8), and ‘their paratactic possibili-
ties suit the spontaneous nature of spoken language where speakers tend to 
add on ideas to whatever they happen to be saying at that particular moment’ 
(Brownlees 2005, 74).

3.3 Lady Bradshaigh: the Perlocutionary Force of a Letter

My last example of the ways in which Richardson exploits the involving po-
tential of the epistolary form reaches out to the perlocutionary effect produced 
upon his addressee (Austin 1962).

The influence of Richardson’s letters on his correspondents, both on the 
linguistic level and the register level, can only be confirmed and increased, 
if we think that his recipients were also his readers, enabled and entitled to 
correspond only after a close, and often addictive, reading of Richardson’s 
novels, or again, of the letters in his novels. The writing-to-the-moment 
technique is well known with its specific linguistic kit, together with features 
of pathemic enunciation (Altman 1982). Clarissa’s letters provide numerous 
examples of this style: the writer’s emotion fills the page, it is not narrated 
but staged, visualized on the page, as in the Mad Papers. It is not only a story 
of tragic events, but also a linguistic representation of passions, which affects 
the reader to the point of determining a reaction conveyed precisely by the 
deeply interactive nature of a letter.21

Let us read an excerpt from lady Dorothy Bradshaigh’s letter of January 
1749. Lady Bradshaigh – ‘Belfour’, at the time this letter was written – was 
certainly Richardson’s most prolific correspondent and probably his favourite. 



189language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

She had read the first volumes of Clarissa and had engaged in a desperate 
epistolary exchange to avoid Clarissa’s death. She had finally promised to read 
to the end of the book and write her opinions on it in a letter to the author.

Jan. 11, 1749
I verily believe I have shed a pint of tears and my heart is still bursting, tho’ they 
cease not to flow at this moment, nor will, I fear, for some time… When alone in 
agonies would I lay down the Book, take it up again, walk about the Room, let fall 
a Flood of Tears, wipe my Eyes, read again, perhaps not three Lines, throw away the 
Book crying out excuse me good Mr. Richardson, I cannot go on. It is your Fault 
you have done more than I can bear… I threw myself upon my Couch to compose, 
recollecting my promise (which a thousand times I wished had not been made) 
again I read, again acted the same Part. Sometimes agreeably interrupted by my dear 
[husband], who was at that Time labouring through the Sixth Volume with a Heart 
capable of Impressions equal to my own, tho’ the effects shewn in a more justifiable 
Manner, which I believe may be compared to what Mr. Belford felt when he found 
the beauteous Sufferer in her Prison Room. ‘Something rose in my throat, I know 
not what; which made me gurgle as it were for Speech’ – Seeing me so moved, he 
begged for God’s sake I would read no more, kindly threatened to take the book 
from me, but upon my pleading my promise, suffered me to go on. That Promise is 
now fulfilled, and I am thankful the heavy Task is over, tho’ the effects are not… My 
Spirits are strangely seized, my sleep is disturbed, waking in the Night I burst into 
a Passion of crying, so I did at Breakfast this Morning, and Just now again. God be 
merciful to me, what can it mean?… I must lock up such a History from my Sight. 
(Barbauld 2011, IV, 240-242)

In this case the addressee is not replying by commenting on the actual words 
of the characters: she reads and cries: ‘I read again’, she says, ‘perhaps not three 
Lines, and throw away the Book’; then reads and walks ‘about the Room’. 
The emotional language as recorded in the letter of the heroine is transmitted 
directly to the (female) reader, who is moved to act, often like the character, 
either Clarissa or Mr. Belford. Here, and in many other examples, the letter 
employs the emphasis on word order and presents a certain lexical selection, 
but also a special focus on prosodic and paralinguistic coding of emotions in 
language, as well as a kind of physiology of the emotions, such as trembling 
hands, or insomnia, all instances of a pathemic dimension.22 In an exemplary 
lesson on ‘how to do things with words’, all the actions described by the writer 
are presented as a direct effect of reading, ‘the heavy Task’ mentioned by Lady 
Bradshaigh. The letter literally gets the addressee to do certain actions, precisely 
those perlocutionary ‘effects which are not over’.23 

With this final example, the interpersonal involvement strategies practised 
by Richardson in his letter writing seem to reach out and capture the recipi-
ent even in her/his extratextual world, only to bring her/him back within 
the epistolary text, which is the space and the time where the linguistic event 
takes place.



190 donatella montini

4. Conclusions

Richardson’s and his correspondents’ personal letters may be considered 
and studied as a peculiar repertoire in the vast corpus of eighteenth-century 
personal correspondence. The homogeneous literacy of the participants and 
a certain constant intimacy of the writer-addressee relationship, which may 
vary only according to parameters of gender and age, are the most relevant 
features of his network clusters. In addition to a qualitative analysis, a quan-
titative approach would be needed to reconsider and further investigate the 
sociolinguistic features of this correspondence, such as factors related to region 
or to class differences, or to male-female linguistic variables. 

With the data I had at my disposal, I started with the writer variables 
which are more easily identifiable considering the relevance and the public 
standing of a figure such as Samuel Richardson’s. In the face of writers and 
topics which might entail a formal tone, the register of Richardson’s letters 
seems rather to veer towards informal and face-to-face conversational traits, 
as if the celebrated writing-to-the-moment style was meant not only as a les-
son in fictional writing, but also as a reference style for the various topics and 
functions of a familiar letter. Thus, both the discussion of narrative worlds and 
an everyday argument appear to be treated with similar linguistic strategies. 

Each of the three examples presented may be approached and expanded 
from other perspectives, but what may be read as a dominant trait in Rich-
ardson’s personal letters is the special focus on the interlocutor, the deliberate 
effort to make his discourse extremely persuasive, and the constant display 
of a conative function which may also achieve perlocutionary effects. These 
aspects are accompanied by a set of linguistic and pragmatic involvement 
features all aimed at including, even graphically embedding, the addressee 
(with)in the writer’s discourse and writing, in a rhetorical, as well as a physi-
cal way. The result is a form of epistolary communication which tends to fill 
in the canonical gap of distance and absence of the addressee, and through a 
constant double-voiced exchange, to produce the illusion of a dialogue within 
a monologue. Nothing else but the quintessence of a letter.

Appendix

[1748]
To Edward Moore

You have done me great Honour, and given me great Pleasure, by yours of 
the 23rd and I should have acknowledged the Favour sooner, had I not been a good 
deal indisposed, and had I not quarrelled with my Pen [and ink]. Indeed we are 
hardly Friends yet. But I thought myself oblig’d in Gratitude to you to make the first 
Advances to the sullen Implement. 

Methinks I would be above justifying a Fault merely because it is past & ir-
retrievable. But have not I dealt in Death & Terrors? Was it not time I shd. hasten to 



191language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

an end of my tedious Work? Was not Story, Story, Story the continual demand upon 
me? I did not desire that the Reader sh’d pity Lovelace: But I w’d not punish more 
than was necessary in his person, a poor Wretch whom I had tortured in Conscience 
(the punishment I always chose for my punishable characters). 

You say, Sir, that ‘Lovelace shd have given Belford an acct. of his own Remorses 
after the Duel, or, if that had been improper Morden might have visited him privately, 
and have written the acct. himself.’ Run thro’ the Body, delirious, vomiting Blood, the 
first was impossible: To the second I answer – Morden was wounded himself – They 
fought in the Austrian dominion: It was concerted that the survivor to avoid public 
animadversions shd. make off to the Venetian territories. de la Tour had actually some 
trouble from the magistrates on acct. of the Duel, tho’ not the principal; and the 
principal out of their reach – But suppose it had not been so – To whom must Mor-
den have written? – To Belford? – expatiating upon the Death of his intimate Friend? 
– Would it have been natural for Morden to have done this? – He was too brave to 
insult over the fallen man- Must he have regretted the Action and pitied him? – Would 
that have been right? Would not that have engaged for the unhappy man general pity, 
which I was solicitous to prevent? – Had Morden written (to whomsoever) he must 
in modesty have been brief – could not possibly have expatiated or triumphed. While 
every praise of Morden from a servant of Lovelace was praise indeed to Morden; and 
every half hint of the disadvantage of Lovelace a whole one.                                                                  

You wish, Sir, that ‘this acct. had been given by any but a Servant.’ Shall we 
suppose that Mowbray or Tourville had been sent abroad with him (Belford was too 
much engaged) Mowbray wd. have given a Brutal or Farcical acct., if I had respected 
his Character, as he did of Lovelace’s delirious behaviour on the first communication 
of Clarissa’s death- and if we judge by his behaviour in the Interview between Col. 
Morden & Lovelace at Lord M.’s, he cou’d not have been a patient spectator of the Exit 
of a Man of whose skill & courage he had so high an opinion and whom he professed 
to love: having also had high words with the Col: which Lord M’s mediation prevented 
at the time going further – Tourville was a Coxcomb, and had besides Mowbray’s 
partialities in Lovelace’s favour – who then but a Servant cou’d give this acct? and was 
not de la Tour intrusted with the whole Management and Knowledge of the affair? 
Was he not a Servant who had travelled with him before? A Servant whom he calls an 
ingenious and trusty fellow, and with whom he leaves all his orders in Case he shd. fall?                 

‘The triumphant Death of Clarissa, (you say, Sir) needed a more particular 
contrast than in the Deaths of Belton & Sinclair.’ – I have a few things to offer on 
this head, after I have observed that Lovelace’s Remorses are so very strongly painted 
by himself in Letter CXI a very few days before the Duel, that there cou’d not be a 
necessity for any persons giving an acct. of them after in was fought. I have shewn 
that there cou’d hardly naturally be any body by whom an acct. of the Duel cou’d be 
given, and of the behaviour of the two Gentlemen in it, but de la Tour, Lovelace’s 
travelling valet. And if this be allowed me, let us observe whether that acct: be not 
given in Character, and tho’ very brief, with circumstances of great Terror, if duly 
attended to, and which carry in them the marks of Signal and exemplary punish-
ment- Did not Lovelace wish to leave tho’ triumphed over? Was Clarissa so mean? 
Did she wish for life after the infamous outrage? Indeed I was afraid that Lovelace wd. 
have been thot. too mean in such his wishes after Morden had conquered him, by a 
skill superior to that on which he had valued himself. I have made Belford say, ‘that he 



192 donatella montini

is confident that Col: Morden wd. not take his life at Lovelace’s hand.’ – Now what 
are Lovelace’s words on receiving the mortal wound – ‘The Luck is yours Sir’ – tho 
his characteristic pride makes him call it Luck, here is a Superiority acknowledged – 
again when the Col: takes leave of him – ‘You have well revenged the dear Creature!’ 
– ‘I have Sir says the heroic Col: and perhaps shall be sorry & c.’ – again the proud 
Lovelace yet succumbing, ‘There is a fate in it – a cursed fate (see the Regret) or this 
had not been.’ Then more explicitly he acknowledged (the however not ungenerously 
acknowledged) inferiority. – ‘But be ye all witnesses that I have provoked my Destiny 
and own that I fall by a man of Honour.’ – Now behold the visible superiority in 
the Cols: behaviour as related by de la Tour. – ‘Sir, I believe you have enough’ – this 
said on giving the first wound, behold Morden throwing down his own sword, and 
running to Lovelace, ‘Ah Monsieur cries the hero, you are a dead man – Call to God 
for Mercy!’ See Morden represented by this servant of Lovelace’s ‘as cool as if nothing 
so extraordinary had happened, and assisting the surgeons, tho his own wound bled 
much,’ and not suffering that to be dressed till he saw Lovelace put in to the voiture 
– giving a purse of gold to Lovelace’s Servant to pay the Surgeons, and to reward that 
Servant for his Care of his dying Master, and see him also bountiful to the very foot-
man of Mr. Lovelace – What Circumstances of noble & generous triumph all there! 
– And over whom? – over the proud and doubly mortified Lovelace – ‘Snatch these 
few fleeting Moments and commend yourself to God’ – What further generosity in 
these Words! Then for Lovelace’s Remorses, even as represented by his Servant at the 
moment he recd. His Death’s Wound (convinced that it was his death’s wound), ‘O my 
Beloved Clarissa, says he, now art thou – inwardly speaking three or four words more’ 
(his sword dropping from his hand, his Victor hastening to support him) was not this 
more expressive than if those three or four words had been given?- Then may it not be 
seen that I have introduced a Ghost to terrify the departing Lovelace, tho’ I had not 
intended any body but Lovelace shou’d see it – Take her away! – Take her away! But 
named nobody says de la Tour.’ – I leave it to the Reader to suppose it the ghost of 
Miss Betterton, of his French Countess, or of whom he pleases, or to attribute it to his 
delirium for the sake of . . . . . . & probability. – Hear Lovelace’s further remorses in de 
la Tour’s acct: – ‘And sometimes says the honest valet, praised some Lady (that Clarissa 
I suppose, whom he called upon when he recived his death’s wound) calling her sweet 
Excellence! Divine Creature! Fair Sufferer! – And once he said – Look down Blessed 
Spirit, look down, – and there stopt his Lips however moving!’ – What a Goddess 
does he make of the exalted Clarissa! – Yet how deplorably impious, hardly thinks of 
invoking the highest assistance and mercy! – 

Now for his Sufferings – ‘the first wound followed by a great effusion of Blood’- 
After the mortal Wound, see him represented as ‘fainting away two or three times run-
ning and vomiting blood’ – ‘– See him supposed speechless, and struggling against his 
Fate, at times, in these words. – The Col: was concerned that my chevalier was between 
whiles (and when he could speak & struggle) extremely outrageous.’ Is not this a strong 
contrast to the death of Clarissa? ‘Poor Gentleman!’ adds the pitying valet, behold 
Lovelace tho object of his own servant’s pity! ‘Poor Gentleman he had made quite sure 
of victory!’– again – ‘He little thought, poor Gentleman, his end was so near!’ 

But further as to his sufferings, – See the Voiture tho’ moving slowly, by its 
motion getting his wounds bleeding afresh; and again, with difficulty stopt. See him 
giving Directions afterwards for his last devoir to his Friend Belford. See him, con-



193language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

trary to all expectation, as de la Tour says, living over the night, but suffering much, 
as well for his Impatience and Disappointment as from his Wounds. – for, adds the 
honest valet, ‘He seemed very unwilling to Die.’ – What a further contrast this to the 
last Behaviour of the divine Clarissa! – See him in his following Delirium Spectres 
before his eyes! His lips moving, tho’ speechless – wanting therefore to speak – ‘See 
him in convulsions, and fainting away at nine in the morning.’ A Quarter of an hour 
in them; yet recovering to more Terror. The Ultimate Composure mentioned by de la 
Tour, rather mentioned to comfort his surviving Friends than appearing to have reason 
to suppose it to be so, from his subsequent description of his last Agonies. Blessed, his 
word – interrupted by another strong Convulsion – Blessed, again repeated, when he 
recovered from it rather to shew the Reader that he felt, than that he was so Ultimately 
Composed. ‘Then seeming ejaculation, – then speaking inwardly but so as not to be 
understood’ – how affecting such a circumstance in such a Man! And at last with his 
wonted haughtiness of spirit – LET THIS EXPIATE all his apparent Invocation and 
address to the SUPREME. Have I not then given rather a dreadful than a hopeful Exit, 
with respect to the Futurity, to the unhappy Lovelace! – I protest I have been unable to 
reperuse the acct: of his Death with this great Circumstance in my Head, and to think 
of the triumphant one of my divine Clarissa, without pity – and I did hope that the 
contrast if attentively considered would be very striking. 

 
Samuel Richardson by Joseph Constantine Stadler, published by Sir Richard Phillips, 
after Susanna Duncombe (née Highmore) coloured aquatint, published 31 May 1804 

NPG D5810. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London



194 donatella montini

1 The present article is part of an ongoing research project on Richardson’s social net-
works with particular focus on his female correspondents: Its aim is to provide an initial and 
provisional step towards investigating potential linguistic and stylistic changes as an effect of 
communal correspondence in Samuel Richardson’s circles. The compilation of a database of 
Richardson’s correspondents’ letters is currently in progress.

2 ‘Out-letters’ from Richardson to his correspondents, and ‘in-letters’, the letters addressed 
to him (Baker 1980).

3 The complete collection was published in 1943 on the bicentenary anniversary of 
Cheyne’s death (Mullett 1943).

4 The famous Biography by T.C. Duncan Eaves and B.D. Kimpel (1971) contains a 
valuable Appendix in which there is a list of the dates and collocations of most of the letters 
which still exist. 

5 In the manuscripts there are lines and phrases in green ink written by Barbauld to 
distinguish them from those written by Richardson himself. In the letter from Aaron Hill to 
Richardson dated 29th July 1741, there is evidence of three writers, besides  Barbauld; there 
is Hill’s calligraphy, the date is written by one of Richardson’s copyists and a note, which was 
then crossed out, was written by Richardson himself (McCarty 2001; Sabor 1989). In 2011 
Cambridge University Press published a reprint of Barbauld’s collection.

6 In 2009, I edited and translated into Italian a selection of Richardon’s letters on the 
composition of Clarissa (Montini 2009).

7 I would like to thank Susan Fitzmaurice, Anni Sairio, and Ingrid Tieken-Boon very 
warmly for their encouragement and their quick and friendly answers and involvement in my 
attempt to find any compiled electronic resource or database where Richardson’s correspondents’ 
letters were included. My thanks also go to the two anonymous readers of the present article 
for their suggestions and corrections.

8 The first two volumes have been recently published. They include Richardson’s corre-
spondence with Aaron Hill and the Hill family (Gerrard, ed., 2013), and his correspondence 
with Dr. George Cheyne and Thomas Edwards (Shuttleton and Dussinger, eds, 2013). 

9 Following a quantitative approach, ‘density, multiplexity and the strength of ties are the 
most common categories used to characterise network structure’ (Sairio 2008b, 2-3).   

10 For biographical information on Richardson’s correspondents I rely on the Oxford 
Dictionary of National Biography, Carroll 1964 and Eaves and Kimpel 1971.

11 ‘There is’, writes Thomas Edwards to Richardson on 30th March 1751, ‘and I doubt not 
but that you have felt it, there is something more deliciously charming in the approbation of 
the ladies than in that of a whole university of he-critics’ (Barbauld 2011, III, 18).

12 By ‘epistolary literacy’ Whyman means ‘a dynamic set of practices that involves letter 
writing, reading, interpretation, and response by networks of individuals with shared conven-
tions and norms’ (Whyman 2007, 578). 

13 ‘My Father was a very honest Man, descended of a Family of middling Note in ye 
County of Surry’; to Johannes Stinstra (Carroll 1964, 228-235).

14 Richardson seems to interpret what in socio-linguistic terms is defined ‘styleshift’, 
represented, for example, by the language of women or of upwardly mobile social classes. One 
characteristic of styleshift is the extreme attention paid to grammatical correctness and a famous 
example of hyper-correct linguistic behaviour is provided by James Boswell, whose linguistic 
insecurity as a Scotsman in London led him to fall back on Johnson’s style (Tieken-Boon 1991). 

15 According to Tieken-Boon a linguistic-grammatical aspect present in Richardon’s prose 
and considered influential is the use of do as an auxiliary: he seems to make an archaic use of 
it, much more so than any other authors of the same period, and also in his private letters in 
which the register remains very formal. There is also an abundance of negatives without do, 
both in his informative prose and his letters and in his use of direct speech. As far as lexicon 
is concerned, Johnson embedded in his Dictionary a large number of examples taken from ‘A 



195language and letters in samuel richardson’s networks

Collection of Moral and Instructive Sentiments’, a collection begun by Richardson’s friend 
Salomon Lowe, finished by the novelist himself and appended to the fourth edition of Clarissa 
(1751) (Keast 1957, 436). Tieken-Boon also maintains the presence of Richardson’s influence 
on another cluster with Sarah Fielding and her friend Jane Collier, in this case with an effect 
on capitalization in her letters and in her spelling in general (Tieken-Boon 2009).

16 Edward Moore (1721-1757) was a dramatist. He was the author of Fables of the Female 
Sex (1744), The Trial of Selim the Persian (1748), The Foundling (1748) and Gil Blas (1751).

17 Richardson’s strategy to lure his readers and correspondents into a cooperation on his 
plots, only to reaffirm his power as author is well known: ‘though he said that he depended on 
readers for inspiration, few of their suggestions were incorporated’ (Whyman 2007, 583). As 
Johnson put it in a letter (28 March 1754) to him: ‘You have a trick of laying yourself open 
to objections, in the first part of your work, and crushing them in subsequent parts’ (Redford 
1992, I, 79). See also Keymer 2000; Montini 2003.

18 Following Nurmi and Palander-Collin 2008, I use register and register variation as re-
flected by the writer-recipient relationship, and in this sense linked to what they also call style. 

19 Sarah Westcomb (Barbauld uses two spellings ‘Wetscombe’ and ‘Westcomb’, but in 
the original Forster manuscripts she signs her name ‘Wescomb’) was the daughter of Daniel 
Westcomb and Mary Page. Westcomb died in 1731 and his widow married James Jobson 
in 1736, but Jobson died four years later. Sarah lived in Enfield, north of London with her 
mother, who had inherited a large fortune, and with a Miss Betsy Jobson, her step-sister. Her 
correspondence with Richardson began in the summer of 1746, when she probably met him 
visiting her friends Vanderblank, the printer’s landlord, at North End, Fulham. By October 
1746 he was sending her the first volume of the manuscript of Clarissa, and by March 1747 she 
was ‘his daughter’, praising the fatherless girl’s devotion to her sick mother, and soon declared 
his intention of directing her ‘future Steps in life’ precisely through Clarissa. After her mother’s 
death in 1754, Sarah married John Scudamore in 1756, but remained a constant correspondent 
until Richardson’s death (Eaves and Kimpel 1971, 198-199; Carroll 1964, 21-22).

20 Baker suggests three elements in the standard closing formulae: the address (‘I am, Dear 
friend’), the ‘compliments’ or ‘services’ (‘your affectionate’) and the signature (Baker 1980, 59).

21 For the aesthetic, performative and pedagogical aspects of the ‘sentimental’ in a his-
torical and cultural perspective, see among others Todd 1986; Mullan 1988; Gordon 2002.

22 See also Susanna Higmore to Richardson, January 2, 1749, Forster Collection XV, ii.f.12 
Victoria and Albert Museum; John Duncombe to Richardson October 15, 1751 (Barbauld II, 
272); Thomas Edwards to Richardson January 15, 1755 (Barbauld III, 112).

23 On the ‘social response’ to Richardson’s fictional characters see Greenstein 1980; 
Montini 2003.

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