I haven't read
Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded yet, but it's Richardson's most well-known work, an epistolary novel describing the love affair between a gentleman (using this in the loosest meaning of the term) and his maid-servant. Basically, the "hero" tries to seduce his young servant girl because she's so pretty, she however refuses him because she values her virtue, this makes her even more interesting to him, he then abducts and captures her but she refuses to surrender to him and he falls more and more for her because of her moral fibre and then in the end he marries her and she takes the society by storm and basically everyone is happy. It does sound like fanfiction ;-) Henry Fielding has written two parodies of it, the short pamphlet
Shamela, which is I gather rather sarcastic, and the more serious novel
Joseph Andrews (which sounds far more interesting than Pamela, truth be told) - and I hang my head in shame and admit I haven't read either yet.
Actually, the description of the books Sir Edward loved best reminded me of
The Mysteries of Udolpho - that one, I have read and it's quite horrid! The heroine too goes on and on about the sublimity of stuff (unfortunately, the narrator doesn't realise how ridiculous she is) and fancies herself so clever, but really she's just ... completely daft. And the novel is full of the stuff of cloak-and-dagger romances, true Gothic horror fare, all completely over-the-top. And Emily-the-heroine too goes on and on about poetry, only, as I said, the narrator rather likes her, which is why she isn't such a blundering fool in discussing (and indeed, writing, more's the horror) it.
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