One of the most important novels of the eighteenth-century, Sir Charles Grandison [1753] shaped the English courtship novel, and was loved and admired by both Jane Austen and George Eliot. The book follows the life of Sir Charles, a man parallel in virtue with Richardson's female paragons Clarissa and Pamela; and a response to the fallible protagonist Tom Jones in Fielding's popular satire of moralising novels. Forming part of the first full scholarly edition of Richardson's complete works, comprehensive general and textual introductions significantly revise and advance understanding of the composition and printing history of Richardson's final novel, and reveal the central place of Sir Charles in the literature of the period. Including Richardson's Historical Index for the first time in any edition, extensive annotations and expansive notes also give readers crucial context, and provides scholars with paths to follow for future research.

‘This handsome new Cambridge edition of Sir Charles Grandison packs the six volumes into three substantial tomes and adds a fourth for (very good) explanatory notes.'

Norma Clarke Source: Times LIterary Supplement

‘Any reader who has fully absorbed the terrors of Pamela’s marriage or pursued to the end the intensities of Clarissa will want to read Grandison too, and so will Jane Austen fans curious about the novel said to have been her favorite. What awaits them is a love story fueled by embarrassment, a forerunner to the modern romantic comedy but also a worthy successor to Clarissa, in which the protagonists face situations so abysmally awkward as to require of them heroic feats of tact and moral imagination. That we now have a magisterial scholarly edition in print is cause for celebration.’

Sarah Raff Source: Eighteenth-Century Studies, on The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson