Richardson's History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-1754), marks a significant departure from his earlier works. Though the novel, like its predecessors, is written in the epistolary mode and shares many thematic interests in common with the much-slighted but popular Pamela (1740) and the author's tragic masterpiece Clarissa (1747-1748), Grandison enacts a crucial displacement of subject and perspective. In response to entreaties from many of his attentive correspondents, and possibly as a reaction to the enthusiastic reception of Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), the increasingly ailing Richardson was driven to write a final novel centred around a “good man” rather than a good woman.
Richardson was all too aware that his previous novels offered few positive models of masculinity amongst the rakish Mr. B. and devious Lovelace, the cruel Mr. Harlowe, the ineffectual Hickman and the...
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Citation: Batchelor, Jennie. "Sir Charles Grandison". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2057, accessed 05 December 2025.]
