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.

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Published 21 March 2002

Citation: Batchelor, Jennie. "Sir Charles Grandison". The Literary Encyclopedia. 21 March 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2057, accessed 20 November 2009.]