Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (Broadview Editions)

by SamuelRichardson (Author), JohnRichetti (Editor), ToniBowers (Editor)

• New

  Paperback
  2010

  $37.93

  Tells the story, in letters, of the beautiful and virtuoso Clarissa Harlowe's pursuit and abduction by the rake Robert Lovelace. The epistolary structure creates layered and fully realized characters, as well as an intriguing uncertainty about the reliability of the various 'narrators'.

• New

  Paperback
  1990

  $23.65

  Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an untrustworthy rake whose vague promises of marriage are accompanied by unwelcome and increasingly brutal sexual advances. And yet, Clarissa finds his charm alluring, her scrupulous sense of virtue tinged with unconfessed desire. Told through a complex series of interweaving letters, Clarissa is a richly ambiguous study of a fatally attracted couple and a work of astonishing power and immediacy. A huge success when it first appeared in 1747, and translated into French and German, it remains one of the greatest of all European novels.