The Memoirs draw on the rich store of satirical writing in Europe: from classical sources such as Horace and Lucian to later writers such as Rabelais, Erasmus, and Cervantes. The “learned phantome” Martinus Scriblerus has with “capacity enough, dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously.” The Scriblerians target the modern age as the site of vaunting, false taste, corruption, and bad faith. In their critique of modern writing in the expanding print culture, they contrast ancient grandeur, passion, dignity, reason, and common sense with modern excess and venal behavior.
Here many strategies are employed: direct narrative, comic analysis, and exposition. Some of the works of the Scriblerians are themselves related to the Memoirs: for instance, Pope’s Dunciad, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. Nor are the Memoirs without modern descendants, such as J. K. Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces (1980). AR
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PRE-1800
Pamela
Samuel Richardson
Lifespan | b. 1689 (England), d. 1761
First Published | 1742
First Published by | C. Rivington (London)
Full Title | Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded
Pamela sparked an unprecedented degree of public debate. The novel consists of letters written by fifteen-year-old Pamela Andrews, the beautiful servant of wealthy Mr. B—. Pamela resists Mr. B—’s increasingly forceful efforts to seduce her, until, chastened by her virtue, he marries her. Pamela does not end with the heroine’s marriage, however, but follows her struggle to establish herself in her new role, and to gain acceptance from Mr. B.—’s peers.
Pamela is a novel about the abuse of power and the correct way to resist. For all Pamela’s insistence that “virtue” is her only defense, she is really empowered by language—something that makes her resistance to her social superior a political as well as a moral act. Despite plotting a provincial servant girl as his heroine, Richardson’s critique of the upper classes is limited; Pamela’s “reward,” after all, is to ascend into their ranks. Pamela herself suggests that Mr. B—’s crime is not merely his sexual incontinence, but his failure to fulfill his pastoral role as her “Master.”
Pamela was praised by some as a handbook of virtuous behavior, while others denounced it as thinly disguised pornography. A slew of parodies appeared in Pamela’s wake (most notably Fielding’s Shamela), arguing that Pamela manipulates her sexuality for personal gain; that Richardson’s moral intentions for the novel had been corrupted by the titillating subject matter. These ambiguities are what make Pamela so fascinating, for the modern reader no less than Richardson’s contemporaries. RH
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PRE-1800
Clarissa
Samuel Richardson
Lifespan | b. 1689 (England), d. 1761
First Published | 1749
First Published by | Samuel Richardson (London)
Full Title | Clarissa: or, The History of a Young Lady
Richardson’s ambitious narrative of tragic seduction is traced through the hundreds of letters written between Clarissa Harlowe, her confidante Anna Howe, the charming, but also cruel and duplicitous seducer Lovelace, and a supporting cast of family and acquaintances. In reading them, we find ourselves slowly absorbed into their individual personalities. Meaning is thus accumulated in each successive letter, but their sequence has its own dramatic structure and tension, maintained for the novel’s length. Through this we are made to confront not only Lovelace’s terrible manipulations, but also his power of allusive evocation, which flow from the same source. In a similar manner, Clarissa triumphantly claims her constant self, virtuous through and beyond death, but is reliant on a complementary capacity for self-deception that uses the measure of her pen to calculate the distance between thought and action in those she observes. Henry James perhaps found in Clarissa a model for his own prose of suspicion.
Like Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (1913–27), the sheer scale of Clarissa means that it can seem a novel that is more talked about than read. Yet for those readers who are prepared to spend time with it, Clarissa offers a proportionate amount of satisfaction. DT
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PRE-1800
Tom Jones
Henry Fielding
Lifespan | b. 1707 (England), d. 1754
First Published | 1749
First Published by | A. Millar (London)
Full Title | The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
The title page of the first edition of Tom Jones, published in 1749, bears the Latin tag, “He saw the customs of many men.”
Michael Angelo Rooker’s illustration of 1780 captures the essentially benign comic verve of Fielding’s satire.
Tom Jones is a picaresque comic novel in which we follow the wanderings and vicissitudes of the engaging hero as he, born illegitimate, grows up, falls in love, is unjustly expelled from his foster-father’s home, and roams England. Warmhearted but impetuous, Tom is repeatedly involved in fights, misunderstandings, and bawdy adventures. However, he is eventually narrowly saved from the gallows and happily united with his true love, Sophia, while his enemies are variously humiliated.
This is not only a long and complicated novel but also a great one. Anticipating Dickens at the peak of his powers (Dickens reportedly said, “I have been Tom Jones”), Fielding describes, with gusto, glee, mock-heroic wit, and sometimes satiric scorn, the rich variety of life in eighteenth-century England, from the rural poor to the affluent aristocrats. Like the paintings of his friend William Hogarth, Fielding’s descriptions betray the sharp observation of a moralist who is well aware of the conflict between Christian standards, which are supposed to govern social conduct, and the competing power of selfishness, folly, and vice in the world. In the society he depicts, Good Samaritans are few and far between, and snares await the innocent at every turn. Nevertheless, like an ironic yet benevolent Providence, Fielding guides the deserving lovers through the world’s corruption to their happiness.
Following the example of Chaucer, Fielding relished farcical entanglements and sexual comedy: his hero is no virgin. Fielding was a brilliant experimentalist (influencing Sterne), and Tom Jones is surprisingly postmodern: the narrator repeatedly teasingly interrupts the action to discuss with the reader the work’s progress—while critics are urged to “mind their own business.” CW
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PRE-1800
Fanny Hill
John Cleland
Lifespan | b. 1709 (England), d. 1789
First Published | 1749
First Published by | G. Fenton (London)
Original Title | Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
Like Cleland himself, the illustrator of Fanny Hill presents erotic acts in a style calculated both to stimulate and amuse.
“Truth! Stark naked truth . . .”
This book is undoubtedly the most famous erotic novel in English. Published in 1749 (though possibly written, in part, some time earlier), it is set in a realistically depicted eighteenth-century London, firmly connecting John Cleland’s work with that of his contemporaries, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett.
At the beginning of the work, Fanny Hill is a beautiful fifteen-year-old country girl. Having lost her “innocence,” she learns to exploit her sexuality to survive and advance herself in the world. In fashioning this controversial and illicitly popular work, Cleland drew on the largely French fashion for erotic fiction, and the existing genre of the “whore’s autobiography,” which tended to present the whore’s life as a warning against the miseries attendant on sexual indulgence. Strikingly, Cleland feels no compulsion to punish Fanny for her promiscuity, and she ends the novel happily married.
Aware that much pornography suffered from repetitiveness, Cleland eschews “crude” or slang terminology for sexual acts or organs, instead producing a dazzling array of metaphors and similes from a seemingly endless suppl
y. Although he unflinchingly depicts the physiological pleasure of sex, for both men and women, Fanny’s sexual appetites are surprisingly conservative—while relishing various heterosexual acts, she is conflicted about her own lesbian encounter, and repeatedly speaks with disgust about male homosexuality.
After surviving more than two centuries’ worth of moral opprobrium, Cleland’s masterpiece has now emerged as an important work in the development of the novel. It still, however, divides readers, between those who find its vibrant depiction of sexuality liberating, and those who see it as a transparent vehicle for male gratification. RH
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PRE-1800
Peregrine Pickle
Tobias George Smollett
Lifespan | b. 1721 (Scotland), d. 1771
First Published | 1751 (revised 1758)
First Published by | T. Smollett (London)
Full Title | The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
Peregrine rescues the scantily clad Emilia from a burning inn, a typical picaresque episode from Smollett’s satire.
“. . . a pert jackanapes.”
The exploits of the egotistical Peregrine Pickle are the subject of Tobias Smollett’s second novel. While the episodic construction and interpolated narratives are reminiscent of Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle is more than a repetition of an earlier narrative. Peregrine is a fallible hero and this is emphasized by the frequently critical tone of the third-person omniscient narrator. The son of a short line of moderately successful merchants, Peregrine is despised by his own mother and adopted by his eccentric uncle, whose exploits provide much of the humor in the early part of the novel. Peregrine enjoys a privileged education that compounds his own misguided sense of self-importance. He undertakes the Grand Tour, traveling through Europe amid a profusion of excess, sexual intrigue, and rakish conduct and, on his return to London, attempts to ingratiate himself into fashionable society and political circles. He aspires to marriage with an heiress as a way of rising to the ranks of the nobility. However, Peregrine’s ambitions are thwarted by his own destructive and corrupt behavior, demonstrating his inability to conduct himself in a manner appropriate to his financial standing. Eventually, during his incarceration in the Fleet prison, Pickle reforms. He marries Emilia and adopts the life of a country gentleman removed from the evils of fashionable society.
Despite the work’s scatological humor, Smollett’s satire engages with some serious concerns, such as the arbitrariness of French justice and the threat posed to social order by contemporary commercialization. Peregrine has to learn the responsibilities and privileges of social position before he can truly value his ultimate reward: a quiet life of felicity with his beloved Emilia. LMar
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PRE-1800
The Female Quixote
Charlotte Lennox
Lifespan | b. 1727 (U.S.), d. 1804
First Published | 1752
First Published by | A. Millar (London)
Alternate Title | The Adventures of Arabella
Charlotte Lennox’s second novel, The Female Quixote, is a forerunner of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. In the absence of any broader education, the understanding of Lennox’s heroine Arabella about the world around her has been drawn entirely from seventeenth-century French romances. Lennox comically displays the pitfalls of Arabella’s failure to distinguish between fiction and reality. She expects lovers to fall at her feet, sees danger and disguise in commonplace situations, and breaks social strictures regarding appropriate female behavior. Arabella’s illusion that the world conforms to the conventions of the romance novel gives her a confidence in herself and her position that is overturned by her eventual re-education. By showing the absurdity of Arabella’s fantasy, Lennox subtly exposes how little power women in eighteenth-century society actually enjoyed. Rationalism triumphs over fantasy in the novel, and Arabella learns about her real position in society.
Although modern readers may find Lennox’s comedy repetitious at times, the novel is still saved by the likeability of its main character—readers are disappointed when she finally succumbs to social convention, and touched by the genuine hilarity of the situations she creates for herself. Yet while readers may laugh at Arabella’s naivety, Lennox’s exposure of the dangers of letting the imagination run wild does bring into question the eighteenth-century practice of limiting women’s education. EG-G
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PRE-1800
Candide
Voltaire
Lifespan | b. 1694 (France), d. 1778
First Published | 1759, by G. & P. Cramer (Geneva)
Original Title | Candide; ou, L’Optimisme
Given Name | François-Marie Arouet
A romantic illustration from an 1809 edition of Candide is captioned: “My captain . . . killed all that stood in the path of his fury.”
Voltaire’s Candide was influenced by various atrocities of the mid-eighteenth century, most notably an earthquake in Lisbon, the outbreak of the horrific Seven Years’ War in the German states, and the unjust execution of the English Admiral John Byng. This philosophical tale is often hailed as a paradigmatic text of the Enlightenment, but it is also an ironic attack on the optimistic beliefs of the Enlightenment. Voltaire’s critique is directed at Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason, which maintains that nothing can be so without there being a reason why it is so. The consequence of this principle is the belief that the actual world must be the best of all possible worlds.
At the opening of the novel, its eponymous hero, the young Candide, schooled in this optimistic philosophy by his tutor Pangloss, is ejected from the magnificent castle in which he is raised. The rest of the novel details the multiple hardships and disasters that Candide and his various companions meet in their travels. These include war, rape, theft, hanging, shipwrecks, earthquakes, cannibalism, and slavery. As these experiences gradually erode Candide’s optimistic belief, the novel mercilessly lampoons science, philosophy, religion, government, and literature. A caustic and comic satire of the social ills of its day, Candide’s reflections remain as pertinent now as ever. SD
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PRE-1800
Rasselas
Samuel Johnson
Lifespan | b. 1709 (England), d. 1784
First Published | 1759
First Published by | R. & J. Dodsley (London)
Full Title | The Full History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Johnson’s princely hero looks uncomfortable with a tool of manual labor as he explores a wider experience of life.
“Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.”
Dr. Samuel Johnson undoubtedly achieved greatest renown, and earned his place in history, with his seminal Dictionary of the English Language. But less well known is his first and only novel, Rasselas, published four years later, which tells the story of its eponymous hero, the Prince of Abissinia. Rasselas lives in the happy valley in which he and the other royal sons and daughters are kept secluded from the vagaries of human life, with their every want and desire provided for, until they succeed to the throne. By the age of twenty-six, however, Rasselas is dissatisfied and restless with this life in which he wants for nothing. Guided by a learned man, Imlac, he escapes from the valley in the company of his sister, Nakayah, and sets out to explore the world and discover the source of true happiness.
A parable in the literary tradition of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Rasselas’s adventures and lengthy conversations provide a vehicle for Johnson’s moral reflections on an astonishingly broad range of topics. These include poetry, learning, solitude, reason and passion, youth and age, parents and children, marriage, power, grief, madness, and desire.
Although Dr. Johnson’s abilities as a novelist are overshadowed by his strengths as a moralist in this book, Rasselas remains of interest today both as a testament to the predo
minant concerns of the Enlightenment, and for the humor and universality of Johnson’s reflections on these topics. SD
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PRE-1800
Julie; or, The New Eloise
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Lifespan | b. 1712 (Switzerland), d. 1778 (France)
First Published | 1760
First Published by | Duchesne (Paris)
Original Title | Julie; ou, la nouvelle Héloïse
Julie, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s first novel, is modeled on the medieval story of Eloise, and the forbidden love between herself and her tutor, Abelard. Yet in Julie, Rousseau transforms secrecy and sinfulness into renunciation and redemption, in which it is the pupil and not the master who makes the central claim on our attention. Julie’s relationship with her teacher, Saint-Preux, reformulates the twelfth-century conflict between bodily desire and religious purpose into a characteristically eighteenth-century study of right behavior. In this epistolary novel, Rousseau links the classical tradition of civic virtue with its Enlightenment counterpart of domestic order and the new birth of individual feeling, which was to eventually culminate in the Romantic movement.
1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die Page 8