Clarissa: Or, the History of a Young Lady. Comprehending the Most Important Concerns of Private Life. Abridged From the Works of Samuel Richardson,

Clarissa, originally published in 1748, stands as a seminal work in the development of the English epistolary novel. Samuel Richardson composed this massive tragedy through a series of fictional letters to provide a moral commentary on the private lives and social pressures faced by young women in the eighteenth century. The work was celebrated for its deep psychological interiority, though contemporary readers were often divided by its harrowing depiction of the heroine's victimization and the manipulative machinations of the antagonist, Robert Lovelace.

This particular volume serves as an abridgment, a common practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to render Richardson's famously lengthy prose more accessible to general readers. By distilling the moral quandaries and the central narrative of Clarissa Harlowe into a single volume, editors sought to preserve the cultural significance of the text while trimming the exhaustive letter-writing style that defined the original publication. These later editions reflect the enduring academic interest in Richardson's contribution to literary realism and his role as a precursor to the modern novel.