This present reprint, therefore, intends to give the fullest text of Richardson’s introduction, and to indicate his changes. The text is that of the second edition, reproduced with permission of the Huntington Library. Brackets, added to this
lithoprint, show Richardson’s principal corrections: “4th” means that the bracketed lines were deleted in the fourth and all subsequent editions; “4th, change 6” means that in the fourth and subsequent editions the bracketed lines were changed to the reading listed here as number six. Several changes within deleted passages are discussed but not marked on the text.
Richardson’s own editions of Pamela appeared as follows: (1) November 6, 1740, (2) February 14, 1741, (3) March 12, 1741, (4) May 5, 1741, (5) September 22, 1741, (6) May 10, 1742, (7) 1754, (8) October 28, 1761[1] (three months after Richardson’s death). The first edition prints Richardson’s preface and two complimentary letters. To these the “Introduction to this Second Edition” adds twenty-four pages of letters and comment and the third edition makes no changes in the introduction whatsoever, even retaining “this Second Edition,”[2] The fourth makes some changes, and the fifth, considerably more. The sixth, a handsome quarto in a row of duodecimos, abandons the introductory letters; the seventh follows the fifth, and the eight makes some major cuts.
Notwithstanding Richardson’s freedom in editing these letters -- and Fielding’s insinuation in Shamela that they were Richardson’s own copy -- he wrote none of them. Jean Baptiste de Freval, a Frenchman living in London, for whom Richardson was
printing a book,[3] wrote the first. The second probably came from William Webster, clergyman and editor of The Weekly Miscellany, wherein the letter had appeared as an advertisement, the first public reference to Pamela, on October 11, 1740.[4] Webster owed (an obligation eventually forgiven) “a debt of 140 l. to my most worthy Friend, Mr. Richardson, the Printer,”[5] and Richardson reprints the letter using Webster’s phrase: “To my worthy Friend, the Editor of Pamela.” These first two letters, de Freval’s and Webster’s, respond to an author’s request for criticism. The rest, new with the second edition, are unsolicited.
All of these are the work of Aaron Hill, excepting only the anonymous letter which Richardson summarizes, beginning on page xxi[6] -- sent to Richardson in care of Charles Rivington, co-publisher of Pamela, on November 15, 1740, the first gratuitous response to Richardson’s book. To advertisements in The Daily Gazeteer (November 20) and The London Evening-Post (December 11-13), Richardson added a note:
An anonymous Letter relating to this Piece is come to the Editor’s Hand, who takes this Opportunity (having no better) most heartily to thank the Gentleman for his candid and judicious Observations; and to beg Favour of a further Correspondence with him, under what Restrictions he pleases. Instruction, and not Curiosity, being sincerely the Motive for this request.[7]
If the gentleman had answered, the introduction to Pamela would perhaps have been shorter. Some of Hill’s acerbity may have been absorbed from Richardson, hurt by the writer’s silence.
The double-entendres mentioned on page xxii are given in the gentleman’s unpublished letter in the Forster collection, in the Victoria and Albert Museum:
Jokes are often more Severe, and do more Mischief, than more Solid Objects -- to obviate some, why not omit P 175 -- betwixt Fear and Delight -- and P 181 -- I made shift to eat a bit of etc. but I had no Appetite to any thing else.[8]