Enlightenment · Europe · Culture

1740

Richardson's Pamela

November 6, 1740

A middle-aged London printer named Samuel Richardson published an epistolary novel about a servant girl who resisted her master's seduction attempts until he, impressed, married her. Clergymen recommended it from pulpits. Henry Fielding parodied it as Shamela. Either way, the middle-class English novel had found its first enormous commercial success.

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In context

Also in 1740 (4 other events on record)

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Before and after in Europe

Before: January 1, 1739: Hume's Treatise of Human Nature
After: April 10, 1741: Battle of Mollwitz

Before and after in Culture

Before: January 1, 1739: Hume's Treatise of Human Nature
After: April 13, 1741: Handel Composes Messiah

Era

Enlightenment (1651–1800), one of 696 events from that era on Saeculum.

Sources

Wikipedia: Samuel Richardson