(1700s)
The epistolary novel, which enjoyed its greatest popularity during the late 18th century, is a genre of prose fiction that uses letters of correspondence to narrate a story. Practically more than any other fictional genre, the epistolary novel calls for the reader’s participation in interpreting and understanding the letters that create the narrative.
Samuel richardson’s three novels—Pamela (1740), Clarissa (1748), and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1754)—opened the doors to the creative and psychological possibilities of fiction writing. Richardson created distinctively different voices for each of his characters and explored their emotional states in traumatic situations. His characters reveal as much in their unconscious emotions as their consciously stated feelings and thoughts. Richardson claimed that his epistolary novels were morally instructive, to be read as much for self-education as for entertainment.
Richardson is often referred to as the inventor of the modern novel, and his influence had far-reaching effects. In England and France, Charles de montesquieu, Fran^oise de graffigny, Jean-Jacques rousseau, and Pierre-Choderlos de laclos all wrote epistolary novels influenced by Richardson, as did Johann Wolfgang von goethe, whose The Sorrows of Young Werther became a best-seller in Germany.
Other writers of the epistolary novel who followed or were influenced by Richardson include Henry Fielding (1707-54), whose Joseph Andrews (1742) is a parody of Richardson’s Pamela; Tobias Smollett (1721-71), whose masterpiece Humphry Clinker (1771) is a collection of comedic letters shared among members of a traveling party; and Laurence Sterne (1713-68), whose novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1760-67) takes the epistolary form to new heights in its use of psychological time, rather than chronological, as a framework for storytelling.
By the early 19th century, the epistolary novel no longer dominated fiction, but the exploration of characters’ thoughts and emotions, to which the epistolary novel gave birth, live on today in every aspect of modern fiction. See also PRfiVOST; sfiViGNfi.
English Versions of Epistolary Novels
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Selected writings. Translated by Catherine Hutter. New York: New American Library, 1982.
Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.
Works about Epistolary Novels
Black, F. G. The Epistolary Novel in the Late Eighteenth Century. Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1940.
Jensen, Katharine Ann. Writing Love: Letters, Women, and the Novel in France, 1605-1776.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995.
