Eighteenth-Century Illustrated Editions of Pamela

We are presenting images from five illustrated editions of Pamela from the eighteenth century. The images on this page are a hint to the fairly significant changes of taste and artistic interpretations of the novel over the years. The editions also vary in the number of illustrations they contain, which can be an indication of the publishers' expectations regarding the volume of sales. For example, Richardson himself commissioned the 1742 edition, meant to be a luxurious commercial item, and this edition includes all four books of the novel, while the illustrations were done by one of the most prominent artists, Gravelot. The 29 illustrations of 1742 are a dramatic departure from the only five images of the first edition, whose commercial success was uncertain before publication, and from the "abridged edition" of 1779, where the cost-cutting design allowed for only four copper-plates. The ornate edition of 1785, looks back at the lavishness of the 1742 edition, at least in its use of illustration, although the kind of taste represented by these plates indicates that the "French" influence in print, also ambivalently received in the history of 18th-century English book illustration, was still fairly strong.

In order to make it easier for users to track changes and continuities in the illustrations, we frequently link from pages for particular editions to the Scenes page, on which images from different editions are topically arranged.