Other editions of book Clarissa Harlowe: Volume IV

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.

Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady is an epistolary novel by English writer Samuel Richardson(baptised 19 August 1689 – 4 July 1761), published in 1748. It tells the tragic story of a young woman, Clarissa Harlowe, whose quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her family. The Harlowes are a recently wealthy family whose preoccupation with increasing their standing in society leads to obsessive control of their daughter, Clarissa, who ultimately dies as a result. It is considered one of the longest novels in the English language (based on estimated word count). It is generally regarded as Richardson's masterpiece.

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