The artistic success of _Clarissa_ undoubtedly reflects in part the lesson Richardson learned from such moral attacks as _Pamela Censured_ and _Shamela_. While "warm scenes" remain in his second novel--as indeed they must in any realistic portrayal of male-female relations--Richardson continually tempers these scenes with clear indications of Lovelace's vicious nature and careful forebodings of Clarissa's tragic fate. Moreover, unlike Pamela, whose reward is marriage to her would-be rapist, Clarissa escapes from her seducer, achieving a morally unambiguous reward, her heroic death.
[1] Aaron Hill to Samuel Richardson, 17 December 1740, printed in "Introduction to this Second Edition," _Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded_, ed. T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1971), p. 9; Knightley Chetwood to Ralph Courteville, 27 January 1741, cited in _Pamela_, ed. Eaves and Kimpel, p. vi; _Gentleman's Magazine_, 11 (1741), 56.
[2] For dates of publication, see T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, _Samuel Richardson: A Biography_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 127, 129; concerning Fielding's composition of _Shamela_, see Charles B. Woods, "Fielding and the Authorship of _Shamela_," _PQ_, 25 (1946), 248-72.
[3] B. W., "Introduction," _Pamela's Conduct in High Life_ (London: Ward and Chandler, 1741), I, xii-xiii; Alan Dugald McKillop, _Samuel Richardson: Printer and Novelist_ (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1936), p. 78; _The Richardson-Stinstra Correspondence and Stinstra's Prefaces to Clarissa_, ed. William C. Slattery (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1969), pp. xxiii-xxiv.
[4] Collier, _A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage_ (London: S. Keble, R. Sare, and H. Hindmarsh, 1698), chap. I; _A Vindication of the Stage, with the Usefulness and Advantages of Dramatick Representations_ (London: Joseph Wild, 1698), p. 6; _Pamela's Conduct_, I, xiii.
[5] _The Progress of Romance and the History of Charoba, Queen of AEgypt_ (1785; rpt. New York: Facsimile Text Society, 1930), II, 78.
[6] _A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with Those of the Animal World_ (London: J. Dodsley, 1765), pp. 138-39.