'Pamela' in the Marketplace

Samuel Richardson''s Pamela (1740) is often regarded as the first true novel in English and a landmark in literary history. As the best selling novel of its time it provoked a swarm of responses: panegyrics and critiques parodies and burlesques piracies and sequels comedies and operas. The controversy it inspired has become a standard point of reference in studies of the rise of the novel the history of the book and the emergence of consumer culture. In the first book-length study of the Pamela controversy since 1960 Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor offer an original definitive account of the novel''s enormous cultural impact.