Samuel Richardson's Clarissa Read Along 2025

[Teleporno]

Hope I'm not treading on anyone's toes by suggesting this as I see there's already a read along for 2025.

I'm having a bit of a Samuel Richardson moment and after reading Pamela would like to tackle his much longer and generally considered much better novel, Clarissa.

I'm not an English teacher or anything so won't be able to guide the read much. I just fancy a challenge and would like company.

Begin in Feb?

Interesting choice, and I wish you luck. Personally, I've crossed it off my list I'm afraid. Not that it isn't a classic. I'm sure it's a great book, but I feel about Clarissa the way I feel about Proust's A La Recherche – they're just too long and there are too many other books to read.

Have you read any of the other 18th-century classics? It's a generally neglected century. Everyone attempts the great 19th-century works (Pride and Prejudice, Vanity Fair, Middlemarch, Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights, Dorian Gray, Jude the Obscure, etc), but often ignore the 18th. Tom Jones is an amazing book. Martin Amis called it the first truly great novel in English. Then there's Defoe. No one ever actually reads Robinson Crusoe (just as no one ever reads 1984 or Frankenstein). Moll Flanders is also a great book. I've always meant to try Smollett as well.

My uncle bought me Robinson Crusoe as a kid. Alas at 7 I just couldn't get into it. Perhaps it's time to give it another go. I've never read Fielding but want to read Shamela soon and also thinking about giving Tom Jones a go.
Thank you!

I have actually read 1984 and Frankenstein so maybe I'll be OK.

I've read Tom Jones, Robinson Crusoe, 1974, Frankenstein and Pamela. Not to mention Tristram Shandy. But I'm old.

Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy have both dated better than Pamela IMHO. Tristram is very funny (watch A Cock and Bull Story and if you liked that you'll enjoy the book, it's a good introduction) and Tom Jones is just a great adventure.

I love the silliness of Pamela even if it is unpalatable by today's standards.
I will put Tom Jones on my list for this year and perhaps Moll Flanders which looks interesting.

So far no takers for Clarissa. Will I be doing this alone? 😁

I love doing a readalong op, but I'm taking part in three of them already and I'm at my limit!

I've read Clarissa, 1984 and Frankenstein along with a lot of other classics. I would agree Clarissa is a long (and some might argue tediious) read but 1984? I know loads of people who've read it.

It's a tedious read for me in the sense of the morals of the day and the super purity of the heroine and the almost moustache twirling dastardliness of Lovelace but this is part of the appeal of a window into another time. I was also interested in reading around Jane Austen and what some of her influences might have been so I would read it again for those reasons.

I've read Clarissa and quite enjoyed it, but I do love 18/19th C fiction. It is long but I found it reasonably well paced being an epistolary novel. I think it took me less time to read than Moby Dick for example, which I found incredibly dense and tedious!

I read it when I was at uni (not even doing English lol) and really enjoyed it, it's much better than Pamela too, there's something about the epistolary format which is really gripping once you get into it. Though I do find it harder to get into now than normal novel.

But I'd say it's not as good as liaisons dangerous which I am slowly re-reading having massively fallen behind the read along group on here so good luck!

1984 is one of those books that everyone feels they've read when actually they haven't. Because the story is so well known, lots of people (self included) don't bother. They feel they've 'sort of' read it. I believe there's even a name for it – '1984 syndrome' or something. You know, where you feel like you've read a book when actually you haven't. The same goes for Shelley's Frankenstein. Robinson Crusoe, A Clockwork Orange, Oliver Twist, Wuthering Heights, and The War of the Worlds are other examples. It's mainly novels that were made into famous films, or novels filled with catchphrases and iconic characters.

I've abandoned Dangerous Liasions for now. I'm trying to read it in French and it's really rusty (my French) I might join the read-along group.

Yeah, I've read all of those as well.

1984 (and Animal Farm) are read at a lot of schools so that's why so many people have read them. The film of A Clockwork Orange wasn't shown in the UK for decades at Kubrick's behest. Presumably now he's dead it can be shown but I doubt it's been seen by a lot of people in the way something like Dracula (also read) has entered the consciousness.

It isn't so much that people lie, more that they delude themselves. Stephen Fry talks about this on QI. It's got some kind of name, like '1984 syndrome' or something. Dracula is another good example. Lots of people will tell you they've read Dracula when they haven't. But like I said it's not that they're lying. They know the story so well that they've kind of deluded/convinced themselves that they've read it. I'd imagine it's even more common with children's books. For years I thought I'd read Alice in Wonderland but then realized one day that I'd never so much as picked the bloody thing up!