The history of sir Charles Grandison: Volume 7

Samuel Richardson

Jan 1820 · Rivington

Ratings and reviews

Five stars for content and esthetics. This book is hard to obtain and I'm glad it's available here. I prefer the authentic fonts and typesetting of the scanned original to the garbled, ugly "flowing text" versions, despite the inconvenience of having to go online to load it. -->One star for technological glitches: my access was corrupted once I reached p294 and I was unable to consistently bring up any pages after that. This final volume begins shortly after the wedding of Harriet Byron to Sir Charles Grandison, which concluded volume six. One young woman after another follows Harriet into marriage like a slow cascade of dominoes, while others, whom we have already seen married, go on to experience pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood. As usual, Sir Charles's sister Lady Charlotte G. provides the liveliest voice. Her half-frightened, half-resentful, ultimately joyful entry into maternity is a highlight of the volume. This is in spite of the fact that ostensibly the plot is occupied with wrapping up the story of Lady Clementina and, to a lesser extent, that of Sir Charles's enamored young ward Emily.