Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady

Robert Lovelace, a wealthy libertine, courts Clarissa's older sister Arabella, who rejects him for addressing his suit to her parents rather than to her. He turns to Clarissa, inflaming Arabella's jealousy and the hostility of their brother James, who had once fought a duel with him; both siblings resent that their grandfather left Clarissa an estate. The Harlowes press Clarissa to marry Roger Solmes, whom she finds repellent, and her refusal convinces them that her professed dislike of Lovelace is a lie. The family confines Clarissa to her room and forbids her to write to her friend Anna Howe until she consents. She corresponds with Anna in secret, and begins a clandestine correspondence with Lovelace. Neither side will concede, and communication between parents and daughter breaks down.

Lovelace has come to regard Clarissa's famed virtue as a challenge, boasting to his friend John Belford that he intends to put it to "trial", and relishing the chance to spite the Harlowes. He presses her to elope. She reluctantly agrees, then writes to call it off, but he deliberately leaves the letter unread in its hiding place. When she comes in person at the appointed hour to tell him, his servant stages a commotion at the house. Fearing discovery, she stops resisting and is carried off.

In his power, Clarissa rightly suspects that he means to seduce rather than wed her. Her family refuse to forgive the perceived betrayal of her elopement, and her father invokes a curse upon her, that her disobedience will bring her ruin in this world and punishment in the next.

Lovelace holds her for months in several lodgings, including, unknown to her, a brothel, whose women he passes off as respectable ladies. He introduces her to his rakish friends, among them Belford, who becomes an admirer and urges him to marry her. Lovelace mocks him and continues the "trial". Under the pretence of rescuing her from a fire he forces his way into her bedroom; she repels him and, under threat of rape, promises to marry him. Considering a promise made under duress void, she escapes to lodgings in Hampstead.

Lovelace finds, takes the rooms around her and hires impostors to play his respectable relations. He intercepts a warning letter from Anna Howe and forges others to end the correspondence. He persuades Clarissa to go out in a carriage with the false relatives and carries her back to the brothel, where, with the help of the madam and the prostitutes, he drugs and rapes her.

Clarissa loses her reason for several days, writing incoherent "mad letters", verses and begging to be admitted to an asylum to die in peace.^[3] When she recovers, Lovelace expects her to capitulate; instead she is repulsed by him and refuses his genuine offers of marriage, despite her position as a fallen woman. Persuading himself that the "trial" was invalid because she had been drugged, he sets out to rape her a second time without opiates; she threatens to kill herself with a pen-knife and he retreats.

Called away to a dying uncle from whom he expects an earldom, Lovelace leaves Clarissa confined. She escapes but the brothel madam has her arrested for unpaid bills and Clarissa, wretched in prison, takes it for the first part of her father's curse fulfilled. Belford bails her out and she takes lodgings with a shopkeeper. Corresponding with his real family, she learns the full extent of his deception, and refuses his offers of marriage. Ill and barely eating, she puts her affairs in order and appoints Belford her executor.

Clarissa petitions her father to revoke his curse and he does so. She dies in the full consciousness of her virtue, attended by her cousin Colonel Morden. In her will she asks that her body not be medically examined, leaving open the possibility that she was pregnant. Her relatives acknowledge their fault only after learning of her death. Lovelace departs for Europe. Learning that Morden means to demand satisfaction, he arranges a meeting; they fight at Trent, and Lovelace dies of his wounds the next day, saying "let this expiate!"

• Clarissa Harlowe – the title character, a virtuous young woman whose family pressure and Lovelace's pursuit drive the novel.
• Robert Lovelace – a libertine who abducts and rapes Clarissa; the novel's antagonist.
• Anna Howe – Clarissa's closest friend and principal correspondent.
• John Belford – Lovelace's friend and correspondent, who comes to side with Clarissa and becomes her executor.
• James Harlowe Jr. – Clarissa's brother, whose enmity toward Lovelace drives the family's hostility.
• Arabella Harlowe – Clarissa's older sister, courted by Lovelace before he turns to Clarissa.
• Roger Solmes – the wealthy suitor Clarissa's family presses her to marry.
• Mrs Sinclair – the London brothel keeper who assists Lovelace.
• Colonel Morden – Clarissa's cousin, who eventually duels Lovelace.

The first two volumes were published in December 1747, and the subsequent five volumes were published in 1748.^[4] The word count of the novel is approximately 970,000 words, and it is "the longest novel in the English canon".^[5]

Clarissa is generally regarded by critics to be among the masterpieces of eighteenth-century European literature. Influential critic Harold Bloom cited it as one of his favourite novels that he "tend[ed] to re-read every year or so".^[6] The novel was well-received as it was being released. Many readers pressured Richardson for a happy ending with a wedding between Clarissa and Lovelace.^[7] At the novel's end, many readers were upset, and some even wrote alternative endings for the story with a happier conclusion. Some of the most well-known ones included happier alternative endings written by two sisters, Lady Bradshaigh and Lady Echlin.^[8] Richardson felt that the story's morals and messages failed to reach his audience properly. In later editions of the novel, he attempted to make Clarissa's character appear purer while also Lovelace's character became more sinister, in hopes of making his audience better understand his intentions in writing the novel.^[7] The pioneering American nurse Clara Barton's full name was Clarissa Harlowe Barton, after the heroine of Richardson's novel.

• Penguin Classics (1985), Edited by Angus Ross (based on the 1st edition)
• The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson (forthcoming)

• Eneas Sweetland Dallas, editor of a 1868 abridged version of Clarissa
• Forced seduction
• Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded
• The History of Sir Charles Grandison