This took a long time to read, but I was engrossed all the way through. It's in nine volumes, and written entirely as letters between the tragic and virtuous heroine, Clarissa Harlowe, and her best friend, Miss Anne Howe, on the one hand; and the libertine seducer, Richard Lovelace, and his best friend, Mr Belford, on the other - plus a few letters from minor characters where necessary.
A story told in letters was apparently an innovation for the time. I thought initially that it would have a happy ending, with Richard reforming and marrying Clarissa; but she refuses to marry him after he drugs and rapes her, and dies piously. Richardson has an afterword justifying this, saying that in real life the good often suffer, and their reward is in heaven.
Through the letters I had a strong sense of the main protagonists as real, fleshed out people each with weaknesses and strengths. The moral seemed to me to be that one small error (in Clarissa's case, believing that through corresponding with Lovelace she could prevent harm coming to her family) can have disastrous consequences. Mind you, Clarissa was really up against the odds, between Lovelace's devious plots and the persistent hostility of her brother and sister which poisoned her whole family against her.
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