Samuel Richardson as Anonymous Editor and Printer

Samuel Richardson as Anonymous Editor and Printer

Recycling Texts for the Book Market

By John A. Dussinger

This study offers a comprehensive account of Samuel Richardson’s numerous editorial interventions in producing books and pamphlets from his press.

PDF, 148 Pages

ISBN:9781785273544

March 2024

£25.00, $35.00

EPUB, 148 Pages

ISBN:9781785273551

March 2024

£25.00, $35.00

  • About This Book
  • Reviews
  • Author Information
  • Series
  • Table of Contents
  • Links
  • Podcasts

About This Book

Owing to the pioneering work of William Sale and Keith Maslen, which produced a catalogue of printer’s ornaments belonging exclusively to Samuel Richardson’s business, we now have an invaluable method for identifying the many publications issuing from the Salisbury Court shop. This study adds a number of new titles to the Maslen catalogue and also examines stylistic evidence in supporting attributions of anonymous texts. A number of books from Richardson’s press are found to be unacknowledged digests of works already in print, and in some cases manuscripts of letters were appropriated as raw material for an essay or pamphlet.

From the beginning of his career as printer, Richardson consistently worked as an anonymous editor and compiler while manufacturing books from his press. While setting type for his many newspapers and journals, this major London printer was mainly concerned about generating a readership and thus invoked all the tricks of his trade to arouse interest in his readers. Without ever asserting himself as the author, Richardson produced many letters to the editor as a means of invoking a collective response without risking the responsibility of answering for the opinions expressed in his letters. It was a rhetorical strategy that worked very well for a printer who by profession had to publish many works that expressed opinions wholly in conflict with his own. His long experience as anonymous editor prepared him in launching fictional “histories” told through multiple voices that conceal or underplay a central author’s authority.

Reviews

“Building on his valuable explorations of Richardson’s early and anonymous journal publication, Dussinger offers carefully annotated texts of 7 contributions to the True Briton (1723–4) and 16 to the Weekly Miscellany (1733–8), all significantly signed with the names of women. Drawing on a half-century of critical engagement with Richardson novels, he is able to establish convincingly the importance of these early texts to our understanding of the great fictions that follow.” — Melvyn New, Professor Emeritus, University of Florida

“Building on his important articles on Richardson’s press and editions of his correspondence, John Dussinger presents periodical essays in which Richardson impersonated women letter-writers to support the sex’s autonomy and to criticize mandated oaths of allegiance. The texts—prefiguring his epistolary novels—reveal Richardson’s religious and political values and his support for the periodicals.” — James E. May, Professor Emeritus, Penn State University

“This is an important scholarly addition to what we know about Samuel Richardson. William Sale’s bibliographical study of Richardson’s press has long cried out for someone able and willing to make sense of Richardson’s full activities as a writer and printer. Dussinger persuades us that these works he attributes to Richardson are by him. He sheds light on the deeper and literal sources of Clarissa, the real people who might have gone into the composite array of characteristics that make up the novel’s two major characters. He also brings out the convoluted attitudes that make up Richardson’s form of feminism. Richardson was fighting the increase of secularism in the era and a transformation of social norms, which, among other things, insisted on more respect for women and closer containment of their sexual and familial lives.” — Ellen Moody, Instructor at Oscher Institute of Lifelong Learning at American University

Author Information

John A. Dussinger, Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has written widely about eighteenth-century authors from Astell to Austen.

Series

No series for this title.

Table of Contents

1.  Introduction to The True Briton: Oaths of Allegiance and Women's Empowerment; 2. Selected Texts of The True Briton; 3. Introduction to The Weekly Miscellany: Sarah Chapone, Women's "Championess."; 4. Selected Texts of The Weekly Miscellany; 5. Conclusion:  Richardson's Press and Women's Entry into Public Life; 6.  Bibliography.

Links

No Podcasts for this title.
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