Pamela vs. Shamela: The Origin of the First Novelist Feud, and Still the Greatest
Pamela vs. Shamela: The Origin of the First Novelist Feud, and Still the Greatest
Richardson’s epistolary novel Pamela was an enormous bestseller in the 1740s. Naturally this attracted some envy and resentment among the burgeoning population of London “scribblers” who worked as essayists, playwrights, poets, and early novelists. Other writers wrote scathing reviews, imitations, parodies, and satires of the great epistolary novel. Chief among the exploiters was Henry Fielding, a real character on his own—successful playwright, scandal-monger, satirist, and believe it or not, later the founder of what became the London Metropolitan police.
In 1740, the new novel form was becoming ascendant in publishing. But the genre was still experimental, and Fielding liked to take old forms, like essays, and make them into fiction with invented characters, exaggerated situations, and usually a comedic tone. He also knew everyone in literary London. So when the prominent printer Samuel Richardson brought out Pamela as a “found collection” of a housemaid’s letter, Fielding was suspicious. Quickly he realized that “The Editor” and the printer and Pamela herself were all the same person—SR himself.
Always the innovator, he used this revelation to his own benefit, and wrote a satiric novel based on Pamela—Shamela, or An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews. (Weirdly, “Shamela” shared a surname with a cousin Henry had tried to abduct when he was a teenager. He also used it again in his great picaresque novel The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams (1742), which was another satire of poor Pamela— Joseph is supposed to be her brother, seduced by her seducer’s mother. I tell you, I’m kind of feeling sorry for old Richardson at this point.)
Henry Fielding must have been pretty unpopular with his literary fellows, as he frequently satirized them, particularly Colley Cibber. Cibber was the poet laureate of the time, but ever since his name has been associated with “successful mediocrity”. Fielding added some extra acid by using the penname “Mr. Conny Keyber” as the author of Shamela. (Now I’m feeling sorry for Cibber too. I don’t think I would have liked Mr. Fielding, even if he did start the police squad “The Bow Street Runners”, which will play a small part in my Regency CSI mystery novel.)
I’m going to summarize Shamela here, and then in the next post, I’ll go into greater depth about the decades-long feud set off by its publication.
Shamela came out in April 1741, within a year of the publication of Pamela. While the book was attributed to Mr. Conny Keyber, everyone knew it was Fielding’s work. If it wasn’t clear from the title—“Shamela” is a merger of Pamela and “sham” meaning hoax or deception—the opening chapter sets up this novella as a reaction to the Richardson novel. The distinction is hinted at in the difference in titles, from Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded to Shamela, or An Apology for the Life….
The story starts the epistolary format with an exchange of letters between two parsons:
Parson Tickletext to Parson Oliver.
Rev. SIR,
Herewith I transmit you a Copy of sweet, dear, pretty Pamela, a little Book which this Winter hath produced, of which, I make no doubt, you have already heard mention from some of your Neighbouring Clergy; for we have made it our common Business here, not only to cry it up, but to preach it up likewise: The Pulpit, as well as the Coffee-house, hath resounded with its Praise, and it is expected shortly, that his L—p will recommend it in a —— Letter to our whole Body.
Parson Tickletext goes on to extol what he assumes is truly a collection of letters from the housemaid Pamela, and emphasizes the authenticity and honesty of her account:
(W)hen modest Beauty seeks to hide itself, by casting off the Pride of Ornament, and displays itself without any Covering;” which it frequently doth in this admirable Work, and presents Images to the Reader, which the coldest Zealot cannot read without Emotion.
Parson Oliver responds with the news that he has a “Friend” who has the inside information on the real identity of the supposed housemaid/letter-writer: The true name of this Wench was Shamela, and not Pamela, as she stiles herself. He also claims that this friend has given him the actual letters Shamela wrote to her mother and other correspondents. And those letters reveal that the maid is actually a scheming hussy, encouraged by her mother to entrap “Squire Booby”, the equivalent of the predacious Mr. B in Pamela. Shamela manages to marry him while maintaining an affair with “Parson Williams,” one of the many impious reverends Fielding created.
Fielding uses the epistolary format to explore different viewpoints on the events of the story, starting with the two parsons genially arguing about the authenticity of the novel Pamela, and in the end agreeing that Shamela is the true account, and capping the story with this snickering postscript:
PS. Since I writ, I have a certain Account that Mr. Booby hath caught his Wife in bed with Parson Williams; hath turned her off, and is prosecuting him in the spiritual Court.
Analyst Jenny Davidson (2004) explains the damaging effect of this satire, “Fielding’s parody revises the conversational exchanges between Pamela and B. into a condensed, degraded pastiche that exposes the truly sordid nature of Richardson’s dialogue. … readers of Shamela who return to Pamela often feel themselves to be reading a different – and a far less innocent – novel.”
By transforming the virtuous Pamela into the unprincipled and profligate Shamela, Fielding also took pains to highlight “the many notorious Falsehoods and Misrepresentations of a Book called Pamela,” such as the unlikelihood of a maid having the time, freedom, and paper and ink sufficient to write 200,000 words in a few months.
Shamela’s last letter becomes particularly “meta”, indirectly outing Richardson not just as the printer and the editor of Pamela, but also the true author. She jovially informs her mother that her new husband, the squire, is so fooled by her pretense of “vartue” as she calls it, that he has pitched their “love story” to someone “who does that Sort of Business for Folks, one who can make my Husband, and me, and Parson Williams, to be all great People; for he can make black white, it seems. Well, but they say my Name is to be altered, Mr. Williams, says the first Syllabub hath too comical a Sound, so it is to be changed into Pamela.”
Together, though, their two versions of the “housemaid’s tale” can be credited as the earliest examples of “the psychological novel”. By using the characters’ own writing as the major source of information, going deep into their inner thoughts and motivations, and showing the contrast in the personalities of two different girls in similar situations.
This new version of Pamela landed like a rotten tomato in the middle of literary London. And it set off a feud that still stands as one of the nastiest in literary history, between the moralistic Richardson and the irreverent Fielding.