Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature.

Samuel Richardson
The Paths of Virtue Delineated
London, 1756

This children’s abridgment shrinks all 18 verbose volumes of the novels of the great 18th-century moralist Samuel Richardson into one volume sized for children’s small hands. One of the novels miniaturized here, Pamela, takes the form of a diary by a servant who writes in the hours she’s supposed to spend embroidering her master’s coat. When she documents his attempts to seduce her, his response is that someone of her sex and rank shouldn’t be writing at all: “you mind your Pen more than your Needle.” A. Evans, who pricked her name into the front pastedown, seems to have done just the opposite.

6.75 L x 4.25 W x 1 Th (in)
EC7.R3961.D756p. Gift of Frank Altschul, 1967