In 1740 Samuel Richardson wrote a novel called Pamela. It was about an exceptionally chaste, modest, and stunning young woman of fifteen, and a man, her pursuer, rich, handsome, persistent, and ten years older, the squire Mr. B____. It is what you think, but it doesn’t exactly end the way a modern reader would expect. I’ve reviewed it here, but what happened after Pamela is my subject today.

About a year after Pamela was published, Henry Fielding published his first novel (really a novella, only 55 pages long). Called Shamela, it is a very crude parody of Pamela, and Richardson was not amused. It is also reviewed via the link above.

The next year, 1742, Fielding published his first full-length novel, The Adventures of Joseph Andrews. Fans of Pamela would have immediately recognized that Joseph and Pamela happen to share the same surname! We learn early on in the novel that Joseph and Pamela are indeed sister and brother (Richardson never mentions a brother). Since born to low family (though when Joseph Andrews takes place Pamela is married to the squire), as Pamela was originally servant to the squire’s mother, Joseph is servant to the sister, who is the squire’s aunt. Welcome to the Booby family. Richardson never alludes to the squire as other than Mr. B____, and he never mentions a brother of his now-bride Pamela, nor an aunt. Fielding makes use of a family invented by Richardson in which to plant his characters. He first calls Mr. B____ Booby in Shamela and brazenly uses it in this novel.

Now, Lady Booby, the aunt employing Joseph, is but recently a widow, said to be a remarkably good-looking woman, about forty. Joseph, at this point, is just over twenty, and Lady Booby has the hots for him, as does Mrs. Slipslop (Fielding’s names can be pretty crude), another of the servants. Joseph is a very handsome and virile-looking young man! If Joseph had been Tom Jones, he might have acceded to both women, but Joseph is as chaste as his sister and rejects them both. They are furious, and the lady fires him, much regretting it throughout the novel.

A good deal of the story is the journey of Joseph and a mentor, Parson Adams, the curate of Joseph’s home parish, from Lady Booby’s summer place to their home parish, along the way meeting up with the one woman Joseph has or will ever love, Fanny, another resident of the parish with whom Joseph grew up. It is also the home parish of Lady Booby (what else could it be?).

Compared to the later Tom Jones (1744), Joseph Andrews is very linear. Things happen along the journey, but each is resolved in turn. There is a big twist near the end, and Lady Booby can taste her conquest of Joseph, who, being brother to Pamela—the squire’s wife—is now an in-law! But the twist untwists through very clever—I can’t believe Fielding came up with all this stuff—manipulation of all the characters, including a pair who otherwise appear only in Richardson’s original novel! In its rather rushed ending, everyone gets what they want, and love triumphs! Even Lady Booby flees to London and meets a dashing officer who makes her forget Joseph—we can only imagine how.

Google tells me that Richardson was “deeply offended” by both Shamela—understandably—and Joseph Andrews—less understandably, writing that it was a “wretched performance,” and that it was only fit “to entertain none but Porters or Watermen.” I’m sure revealing the family name to be Booby was a great part of Richardson’s ire, but come on… Mr. B___? Richardson set himself up for that one! In my view, Joseph Andrews is a very clever take-off from, and not parody of, Pamela. Unlike Shamela, it is not crude (ok, except the name Booby), but clever and very funny.