 Title page | |
| Author | Unknown |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Language | Early Modern English |
| Genre | Romance novel Conduct book |
| Set in | Clonmel, 1690 |
| Publisher | Richard Bentley |
Publication date | 1693 |
| Media type | |
| 823.4 | |
Vertue Rewarded; or, The Irish Princess is a 1693 novel. Published in London, it is one of the earliest examples of Irish prose fiction in the English language. [1] [2]
Two original copies survive; one in the Bodleian Library and one in the British Museum. [3]
The novel opens with a quote from William D'Avenant's Gondibert (1651).
Set in Clonmel, Ireland in August 1690, the young Irish Protestant woman Marinda is romanced by a European prince in the army of William of Orange.
There are two interpolated tales: one about the Irish princess Cluaneesha (set in pre-Norman Ireland) and one about Faniaca, an indigenous American living through the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.
Prof Hubert McDermott has suggested the work as a possible inspiration for Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), considered the first major English novel — the two books have similar plots: "a beautiful and virtuous young woman of little or no social status falls in love with a prince or libertine who is equally besotted but whose wealth, rank and ambition make him desire only to seduce and debauch the chaste heroine, without having to marry her." Also, the title "virtue rewarded" is not found in any other work of the period. [3] [4]
Ian Campbell Ross has noted similarities with Oroonoko , both books mixing romance, history and folklore. [5]
John Wilson Foster wrote on how Vertue Rewarded excludes the "wild Irish" from its world (Marinda is an English-speaking Protestant, and presumably of English ancestry), and notes how the Peru story "reinforces the impression of dislocated exotica." [6] Vertue Rewarded is assumed to have been written by one of the British planters who settled in Ireland after the Williamite conquest, and has been described as anti-Irish propaganda. [7]
Laurence Sterne, was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published sermons and memoirs, and indulged in local politics. He grew up in a military family travelling mainly in Ireland but briefly in England. An uncle paid for Sterne to attend Hipperholme Grammar School in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as Sterne's father was ordered to Jamaica, where he died of malaria some years later. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge on a sizarship, gaining bachelor's and master's degrees. While Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire, he married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741. His ecclesiastical satire A Political Romance infuriated the church and was burnt. With his new talent for writing, he published early volumes of his best-known novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Sterne travelled to France to find relief from persistent tuberculosis, documenting his travels in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published weeks before his death. His posthumous Journal to Eliza addresses Eliza Draper, for whom he had romantic feelings. Sterne died in 1768 and was buried in the yard of St George's, Hanover Square. His body was said to have been stolen after burial and sold to anatomists at Cambridge University, but recognised and reinterred. His ostensible skull was found in the churchyard and transferred to Coxwold in 1969 by the Laurence Sterne Trust.
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Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel first published in 1740 by English writer Samuel Richardson. Considered one of the first true English novels, it serves as Richardson's version of conduct literature about marriage. Pamela tells the story of a fifteen-year-old maidservant named Pamela Andrews, whose employer, Mr. B, a wealthy landowner, makes unwanted and inappropriate advances towards her after the death of his mother. Pamela strives to reconcile her strong religious training with her desire for the approval of her employer in a series of letters and, later in the novel, journal entries all addressed to her impoverished parents. After various unsuccessful attempts at seduction, a series of sexual assaults, and an extended period of kidnapping, the rakish Mr. B eventually reforms and makes Pamela a sincere proposal of marriage. In the novel's second part Pamela marries Mr. B and tries to acclimatise to her new position in upper-class society. The full title, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, makes plain Richardson's moral purpose. A best-seller of its time, Pamela was widely read but was also criticised for its perceived licentiousness and disregard for class barriers. Furthermore, Pamela was an early commentary on domestic violence and brought into question the dynamic line between male aggression and a contemporary view of love. Moreover, Pamela, despite the controversies, was able to shed light on social issues that transcended the novel for the time such as gender roles, early false-imprisonment, and class barriers present in the eighteenth century. The action of the novel is told through letters and journal entries from Pamela to her parents. Richardson highlights a theme of naivety, illustrated through the eyes of Pamela. Richardson paints Pamela herself as innocent and meek to further contribute to the theme of her being short-sighted to emphasize the ideas of childhood innocence and naivety.
Events from the year 1693 in England.
Events from the year 1693 in Ireland.
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