Clarissa, Volume 1

Clarissa, vol 1 (History of a
Young Lady)

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Richardson #3 in our series by Samuel Richardson
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Title: Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9)
Author: Samuel Richardson
Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9296] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 17,
2003]

Edition: 10
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARISSA,
VOLUME 1. ***

Produced by Julie C. Sparks

CLARISSA HARLOWE
or the
HISTORY OF A YOUNG LADY
Nine Volumes
Volume I.

CLARISSA
or, the
HISTORY
OF A
YOUNG LADY:
Comprehending The most Important Concerns of Private Life. And
particularly shewing, The Distresses that may attend the Misconduct
Both of Parents and Children, In Relation to Marriage.

PREFACE
The following History is given in a series of letters, written Principally
in a double yet separate correspondence;
Between two young ladies of virtue and honor, bearing an inviolable
friendship for each other, and writing not merely for amusement, but
upon the most interesting subjects; in which every private family, more
or less, may find itself concerned; and,
Between two gentlemen of free lives; one of them glorying in his
talents for stratagem and invention, and communicating to the other, in

confidence, all the secret purposes of an intriguing head and resolute
heart.
But here it will be proper to observe, for the sake of such as may
apprehend hurt to the morals of youth, from the more freely-written
letters, that the gentlemen, though professed libertines as to the female
sex, and making it one of their wicked maxims, to keep no faith with
any of the individuals of it, who are thrown into their power, are not,
however, either infidels or scoffers; nor yet such as think themselves
freed from the observance of those other moral duties which bind man
to man.
On the contrary, it will be found, in the progress of the work, that they
very often make such reflections upon each other, and each upon
himself and his own actions, as reasonable beings must make, who
disbelieve not a future state of rewards and punishments, and who one
day propose to reform--one of them actually reforming, and by that
means giving an opportunity to censure the freedoms which fall from
the gayer pen and lighter heart of the other.
And yet that other, although in unbosoming himself to a select friend,
he discover wickedness enough to entitle him to general detestation,
preserves a decency, as well in his images as in his language, which is
not always to be found in the works of some of the most celebrated
modern writers, whose subjects and characters have less warranted the
liberties they have taken.
In the letters of the two young ladies, it is presumed, will be found not
only the highest exercise of a reasonable and practicable friendship,
between minds endowed with the noblest principles of virtue and
religion, but occasionally interspersed, such delicacy of sentiments,
particularly with regard to the other sex; such instances of impartiality,
each freely, as a fundamental principle of their friendship, blaming,
praising, and setting right the other, as are strongly to be recommended
to the observation of the younger part (more specially) of female
readers.
The principle of these two young ladies is proposed as an exemplar to
her sex. Nor is it any objection to her being so, that she is not in all
respects a perfect character. It was not only natural, but it was
necessary, that she should have some faults, were it only to show the
reader how laudably she could mistrust and blame herself, and carry to

her own heart, divested of self-partiality, the censure which arose from
her own convictions, and that even to the acquittal of those, because
revered characters, whom no one else would acquit, and to whose much
greater faults her errors were