Pamela Censured — Anonymous

An excerpt from the Introduction.The publication of Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded on 6 November 1740 occasioned the kind of immediate and hyperbolic praise which would have turned the head of an author less vain than Richardson. Proclaimed by Aaron Hill as being the Soul of Religion, and by Knightley Chetwood as the book next to the Bible which ought to be saved if all the Books in England were to be burnt, Pamela seemed certain of universal acclaim, especially when the Reverend Benjamin Slocock praised it extravagantly from the pulpit of St. Saviour's in Southwark within two months of its initial printing. Even the Objections voiced by several correspondents and published at the beginning of the second edition of Pamela (14 February 1741) seemed relatively inconsequential when weighed against the Gentleman's Magazine's assertion in January 1741 that every Londoner with the slightest curiosity was reading Pamela.