Author Birthday [August] : Samuel Richardson

#AuthorBirthday is a monthly feature, in which I highlight one author each month, mostly the ones I have not yet read. Part of the aim is to get familiar with the author and (hopefully) encourage me to start reading his/her work.

For August, please welcome:

SAMUEL RICHARDSON

While his actual birth date is unknown, 19 August 1689 has been recorded as the baptize day of Samuel Richardson, an English writer and printer. Born into a poor family, Richardson was the son of a cabinet maker and mahogany exporter. When he was forced to stop the business, Richardson Sr. moved his family to Derbyshire, and lived their modest life there.

Though Richardson's only education is believed to be grammar school, nevertheless he loved story telling and letters writing. When he was eleven, he wrote a letter to a 50 years old woman, who reported this to his mother, whom chided him of his impertinence. However, this incident made him quite popular as letter writer within his acquaintances, that he often helped girls by writing reply to their love letters.

His father had wanted to educate him to be a clergyman, but since they could not afford it, he let his son pick his own profession. Richardson picked printing "to gratify a thirst of reading". In 1706 be started his apprenticeship in John Wilde's printing shop, which would last for seven years. He first worked as a printer, before being promoted to composite, and finally corrector.

After seven years, Richardson braved himself to leave Wilde's office, and set up his independent shop as "Overseer and Corrector of a Printing Office." Then six years later he finally set up his own printing company. Their first major printing contract came in 1723, four years after starting the company. It was to print a bi-weekly "The True Briton", which attacking the government, and eventually got censored for libels. Fortunately for Richardson, his name was not linked with it, that his business remained intact, and kept improving.

Success in the business was not followed equally by personal matter. From his first marriage with Martha Wilde (his boss' daughter) in 1721, Richardson had seven children. Yet, they died one by one during infancy; the youngest passed away not long after his mother's death. Widowed and without children, Richardson married the second time with Elizabeth Leake, and blessed with five daughters and one son. Four of the five daughters survived their father, but the only son - the one Richardson had projected to succeed the business as his heir, died when he was only one year old. :(

In 1732 he took a nephew, Thomas Verren, as an apprentice, hoping to make him his heir, but, again.. the nephew died not long after apprenticeship. His last hope was his other nephew, whom he distrusted and did not have capability in printing business. So, while the business prospered while Richardson was in charge, it's soon collapsed under the nephew's care.

You might have been wondering now, is this Samuel Richardson guy I've been telling you until now, the same Samuel Richardson who was famous with two epistolary novels: Pamela and Clarissa? Why didn't I mention anything about his writing career? That's because he did not start writing and publishing novels until he's in his fifties. It all began when his friends Charles Rivington and John Osborn asked him to write "a little volume of letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers, who were unable to incite for themselves." It is this work which has inspired Richardson to write his first epistolary novel: Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded, published in 1740 - a novel which Henry Fielding 'mocked' in his novel Joseph Andrew. Pamela was followed by the second novel, which was considered Richardson's magnum opus: Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748). His third and final novel is about a gentleman: The History of Sir Charles Grandison, published in 1753.

Novels weren't his only literary achievements. During his active career, Richardson has produced about 500 works in journals and magazines. On printing business, one of his notable job was the third edition of Daniel Defoe's Tour through Great Britain in 1742.

Richardson's health began to deteriorate in 1748, while he was still actively working. He suffered from Insomnia in 1758, then Apoplexy in 1761, and his health never recovered until his death in 4th July 1761 at the age of 72. Richardson was buried near his first wife, Martha.

Have you read Samuel Richardson's? What's your favorite?