Audiobook · read by volunteers
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
Read by Ann Boyer, TriciaG, John Nixon, Melanie Schleeter McCalmont, Grant Hurlock, Annise, hpark, Celena Arter, Magdalena, Lucy Burgoyne (1950-2014) · 37 chapters · 22 h 10
About the book
Pamela Andrews is a pretty, pious fifteen-year-old servant in a rich household. When her mistress dies, her young master begins to pursue her, first with gifts, then with pressure, and then with outright imprisonment. Pamela’s only weapon is her virtue and her pen, and she writes letters home to her parents, describing every attempt on her honour in vivid detail. Samuel Richardson’s novel, told almost entirely in letters and journal entries, was a sensation when it appeared in 1740. It was widely read, copied, praised from pulpits, mocked by rivals and turned into plays and paintings. Today it can seem startling, comic and thought-provoking by turns, a window into eighteenth-century attitudes to class, marriage and female conduct. Ten LibriVox volunteers share the thirty-seven sections, adding up to over twenty-two hours of listening. A long, absorbing classic for readers who like to see how the novel was invented.
Introduction
Samuel Richardson was born in 1689 and died in 1761. He was an English printer and publisher who turned to fiction in middle age, and his three great novels in the form of letters made him one of the most influential figures in the early history of the English novel. He was admired across Europe, and his work shaped the sentimental fiction of the later eighteenth century.
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded was published in 1740 and followed the fortunes of a young servant who resists the advances of her employer. Its subtitle announces a moral purpose, and the author presented the book as a means of encouraging virtue and religion in the young. The epistolary form, in which the story is told through the heroine’s own letters, gives the narrative an immediacy that readers found compelling. It also invites questions about how far she can be trusted as a narrator.
The book was immensely popular, but it also provoked parody and criticism. Henry Fielding wrote a famous satire on it, Shamela, and readers have long debated whether Pamela is a model of virtue or a shrewd young woman who knows how to win a husband. Modern listeners may find both readings plausible, and that ambiguity is part of the novel’s interest.
This LibriVox recording is divided into thirty-seven sections and runs for more than twenty-two hours, with ten volunteers sharing the reading. It is a long commitment, but it offers a rich picture of eighteenth-century society and a key text in the story of the English novel.
Public domain
Samuel Richardson died in 1761: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text