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Like Daniel Defoe before him, Samuel Richardson came to novel writing relatively late in life — Defoe was 59 when Robinson Crusoe appeared in 1719, Richardson 51 when he wrote and printed Pamela in 1740. However much the success of these first substantial works of fiction may have surprised the authors and those close to them, neither writer arrived at fame unpractised in his craft. Defoe had contributed for decades to the emerging print market in and around London, writing in a host of genres for an array of venues. Indeed, a veritable cottage industry has emerged among Defoe scholars over the past decades fuelled by attributions, deattributions, and claims of misattributions directed at hundreds of anonymous publications by (or not by, or perhaps by) the author. For his part, Richardson too had been busy in the years before becoming a novelist, not only establishing himself as a major printer in London but writing sundry anonymous material for a variety of journals, newspapers, and pamphlets, almost all published by his own press. These earliest publications have, with few exceptions, lain hidden from view, perhaps in part because of Richardson's own disinterest. To his Dutch translator, Johannes Stinstra, who in 1753 asked if there were 'other Pieces than Pamela and Clarissa' written by the author, Richardson responded, 'None, I think worthy of your Notice.' Richardson scholars will find much in Dussinger's gathering of materials worthy of their 'notice'. Included in this collection are over two dozen contributions to two journals, The True Briton (1723–24) and The Weekly Miscellany (1733–36), each very likely written by Richardson. Although he is careful not to claim definitive proof of Richardson's authorship — by definition 'anonymous publication in this period was a closely guarded secret between writers and printers' (p. 1) — Dussinger provides convincing linguistic, contextual, and historical evidence in support of his attributions. The Duke of Wharton 'turned to Richardson' as printer for True Briton 'for some reason', Dussinger suggestively notes, which makes Richardson's apparent decision to serve as both printer and anonymous pen for the mouthpiece of a 'flamboyant Tory dissident' biographically significant (p. 3). Perhaps even more interesting for scholars of Richardson's novels, however, are the various letters Richardson seems to have provided to clergyman William Webster for The Weekly Miscellany. Richardson had experimented with female voices in True Briton, but not in the iterative, sustained fashion he did in creating 'Belinda' as a type of playful foil to Webster's pseudonymous 'Richard Hooker'. Indeed, this early prototype of a strong feminist character manages to adumbrate in a microcosmic fashion much that would define Richardson's later career as a novelist — everything from his rivalry with Henry Fielding (who, to Richardson's evident indignation, attempted to impersonate Belinda in an initial issue of The Champion), to his remarkable epistolary relationships with the Judith Shakespeares of his day (tracing his emerging relationship with Sarah Chapone, as mediated through the anonymous exchanges Dussinger prints here, is as delightful as it is confusing). To travel from Belinda to Pamela Andrews requires a remarkably short bridge. Dussinger does terrific detective work throughout his introduction, headnotes, and footnotes, piecing tantalizing hints and references together into persuasive vignettes. In one memorable paragraph, he begins by linking a manuscript copy of an essay by Sarah Chapone to John Wesley, then Wesley through Chapone to Richardson (who somehow came to print Wesley's Oxford Methodists in 1733), which might explain how Chapone received a copy of yet another book printed by Richardson, Patrick Delany's Revelation Examined with Candour (1732) — an important connection, Dussinger observes with delight, 'since she later married Delany!' (p. 37). That exclamation point is well worth noting. Dussinger has been at this sort of work for decades, and still he brings a refreshing sense of excitement and joy to solving the various puzzles Richardson seems never to tire of leaving us. (At a time when humanities programmes continue to haemorrhage students, we would probably all do well to adopt more of Dussinger's enthusiasm for his subject.) Even Dussinger's rare misses bear fruit. In Weekly Miscellany 53 (Dec. 15, 1733), Belinda complains of a 'Spark that has a Month's Mind to me', which Dussinger glosses with an eye to the technical reference, a Catholic ritual prayer for a recently deceased person: 'Perhaps Belinda is implying such dangerous libertines can be the cause of death for a virtuous woman?' (p. 53). It seems far more likely that Belinda's usage captures the OED's second meaning — 'an inclination, fancy liking' — as in Foible's arch description of Mrs. Marwood in Congreve's The Way of the World: 'She has a month's mind; but I know Mr. Mirabell can't abide her.' But while the specifics of Dussinger's note might not be apropos, that Belinda would reference this particular play lends even more credence to his overall attribution of Richardson as likely author; the editors of the Cambridge edition of Sir Charles Grandison found 11 separate allusions to The Way of the World, which suggests the author's abiding and long-lived interest in Congreve's bitingly humorous model of English courtship. Dussinger's scholarship is so good, in short, that it manages to be right even when it is wrong.
E. Derek Taylor (Wed,) studied this question.