Books: Pamela, Shamela

AN APOLOGY FOR THE LIFE OF MRS. SHAMELA ANDREWS (86 pp.) — Henry Fielding — University of California ($2.75).

When Samuel Richardson wrote the first modern English novel, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, a 1740 tearjerker about an innocent serving maid and her lecherous master, most of London enjoyed a good cry. But the plight of Pamela Andrews, often fighting with her back to the bedroom wall, seems to have given Richardson's friend and fellow-novelist, Henry Fielding (Tom Jones), a hearty laugh instead, or at least the idea for a bawdy satire. Within six...

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