Richardson
Richardson names 7 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Richardson SAMUEL, an English novelist
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SAMUEL, an English novelist; born in Derbyshire, in 1689. He was the son of a joiner. The man who was afterward the moralist of Salis bury Court was as a boy the "Gravity" and "Serious" of his school-fellows; the novelist who penned the interminable epistles of Clarissa and Harriet Byron was as a youth the favored and indefatigable amanuensis of half the girls in the neighborhood, acquiring in this artless office something of that strange knowledge of the minuter mechanism of the feminine mind which is so conspicuous a feature of his genius. He says of himself that he had only "Common schoollearning"; but he appears to have been at Christ's Hospital. In 1706, at the age of 16, he was bound by his own wish to John Wilde of Stationers' Hall, a printer, with whom he served the usual period, ultimately completing the orthodox program of exemplary apprenticeship by marrying his master's daughter. From 1713 to 1719 he worked as a journeyman printer. In the latter year he opened an establishment of his own in the center, and later in the N. W. corner (No. 11) of Salisbury Square, then Salisbury Court. His printing office and warehouses were in Blue Ball Court, on the E. side of the square. He printed more than one newspaper, and by the favor of Speaker Onslow obtained the printing of the journals of the House of Commons, 26 volumes of which passed through his establishment. He was over 50 when two bookselling friends invited him to prepare a volume of familiar letters "in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers who were unable to indite for themselves." Hence sprung "Pamela," published in November, 1740. It consisted of "a series of familiar letters from a beautiful young damsel to her parents. Published in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the mind of the youth of both sexes." Its vogue, in a coarser and robuster age than ours, was extraordinary. Divines extolled her from their pulpits; fine ladies triumphantly exhibited her popular chronicles at places of amusement; and in remote country villages, when at last she was happily married, her rustic admirers set the bells a-ringing. In February followed a second edition; a third succeeded in March, and a fourth in May. Grub street fastening promptly on this unexampled popularity, hastily put together for sequel a "Pamela in High Life," which had the unfortunate effect of seducing Richardson into two supplementary volumes, now forgotten; and then Henry Fielding produced what Richardson and his coterie regarded as the "lewd and ungenerous engraftment" of "Joseph Andrews." Eight years elapsed before Richardson published another novel-his masterpiece: "Clarissa; or the Adventures of a Young Lady," known generally as "Clarissa Harlowe." Virtue, in this performance, was not "rewarded," but ruined. The heroine is nevertheless drawn with a tenacity of pretend; and the chief male character, that of Lovelace, though more of an abstraction, is scarcely inferior. Having drawn the ideal woman in "Clarissa," Richardson proceeded, some five years later, to portray, in "Sir Charles Grandison," the perfect man- "the man of true honor." This is a work of much greater ability than "Pamela," but still far below "Clarissa." It has, moreover, no central story strong enough to reconcile the reader to the prolix impeccability of its superfine hero. Besides a solitary essay in Johnson's "Rambler" (No. 97) 97), and the voluminous but not very interesting correspondence published (with an excellent memoir) by Mrs. Barbauld in 1804, Richardson left no other literary remains of any importance. In later life a nervous habit grev. SAMUEL RICHARDSON upon him, which terminated in 1761 by a fit of apoplexy, of which he died. He has left his own portrait in his letters to Lady Bradshaigh; but it might also have been deduced from his letters. He was a sentimental, purring, methodical, well-meaning little man, domesticated and affectionate, whose fitting environment was feminine society of the sympathetic sort; and he has repaid the gentle caresses with which his worshipers ers tempered the wind of adverse criticism to his sensitive soul by depicting their sex in return with a patience, a discrimination, a sustained analysis of secret spring and motive which it has been given to no other insight to which "Pamela" could scarcely male author, living or dead, to achieve.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Samuel, an English novelist. He belongs to the same period as Addison, Pope, Steele, and Swift. He had a gentle, feminine spirit, and early showed a skill and an ease in expression which led to his being employed as a letter writer by some young ladies of the neighborhood. This began when he was only thirteen years of age. So well did he please these young women with his letters, and so carefully did he guard their little secrets, that they kept him writing frequently for a couple of years. At the age of fifteen he went up to London and learned the printer's trade, which he followed during the rest of his life. When about fifty years old, some publishers asked him to prepare a letter writer which would be useful to persons not used to expressing themselves through the medium of pen and paper. While engaged in this work, it occurred to him that he might make these letters tell a connected story. Pamela, the first modern English novel, was the result. It is in four volumes, and is intended to show that virtue brings its own reward. Richardson's other novels are also in the form of letters. They are of great interest to the student of literature, but are too tedious for the general reader. Clarissa Harlowe drags through eight volumes. It is large enough to merit Kipling's humorous description of "a three decker." The heroine is admitted to be a fine, dignified woman, well drawn and revealing a high ideal of womanly character. Sir Charles Grandison , equally extended, gives Richardson's idea of a model gentleman, such as we now say is of the old school. Richardson has the power of so thoroughly identifying himself with his various characters that, after we are thoroughly introduced to them, we can name them when we hear selections read from their letters.--Halleck.
Richardson SIR JOHN, a British naturalist and Arctic traveler
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SIR JOHN, a British naturalist and Arctic traveler; born in Dumfries, Scotland, Nov. 5, 1787. After studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh he entered the royal navy, in 1807, as assistant-surgeon. He served till 1819, and was on various stations surgeon and naturalist to the Arctic exand 1825-1827, peditions of 1819-1822 under Sir John Franklin, exploring on the latter occasion the shores of the Arctic Ocean between the Mackenzie and Cop- Geognostical permine rivers. He wrote " Observations" as an appendix to the "Narrative" published by Franklin (1829, London), and edited, along with Kirby and Swainson, the "Fauna Boreali-Americana" (4 vols. 1829-1837). In 1838 he was appointed physician to the fleet, and in 1846 was knighted. In March, 1848, he took charge of an expedition to search for Franklin, and on his return published "The Arctic Searching Expedition" (1851) and "The Polar Regions" (1861). He died near Grasmere, England, June 5, 1865.
Richardson BENJAMIN WARD, an English physician
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
BENJAMIN WARD, an English physician; born in Somerby, Leicestershire, England, in 1828; was graduated in medicine at St. Andrews University in 1854. In 1855 he edited the "Journal of Health"; and he gained the Astley Cooper prize by his treatise on "The Cause of the Coagulation of the Blood," and the Fothergillian gold medal by a disquisition on the "Diseases of the Fœtus," in 1856. He originated the use of ether spray for the local abolition of pain in surgical operations, and introduced methylene bichloride as a general anæsthetic. He was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and of the Royal Society, and president of the Medical Society of London. He published several works on medicine and hygiene, and was an earnest sanitary reformer. In 1893 he was knighted and died in 1896.
Richardson HENRY HOBSON, an American architect
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
HENRY HOBSON, an American architect; born in New Orleans, La., in 1838; was graduated at Harvard in 1859; entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1860, where he speedily gained a reputation as a most promising pupil. In 1865 he returned to the United States, and entered on a remarkably successful professional career. He designed some of the most beautiful buildings in this country, notably Trinity Church, Boston; the building of the Boston and Albany railroad, at Springfield, the Albany city hall, the Buf- Law falo Lunatic Asylum, the Cambridge Schools, and the new capitol in Albany. He died in Boston, Mass., April 28, 1886.
Richardson HOLDEN CHESTER, an American naval officer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
HOLDEN CHESTER, an American naval officer, born at Shamokin, Pa., in 1878. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1901 and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1907. In 1904 he became assistant naval constructor, and in 1912, naval constructor. From 1915 to 1917 he was a member and secretary of the National Advisory Commission for Aeronautics. During the World War he rendered valuable services in connection with aeroplane construction and in May, 1919, served as the pilot of the NC-3 on the trans-Atlantic flight. He was a member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.
Richardson WILLIAM CUM- MINGS, an American architect
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WILLIAM CUM- MINGS, an American architect, born at Concord, N. H., in 1854. After studying architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1873 to 1875, he worked as an assistant in various architectural offices and made several trips abroad for further study. In 1881 he became a member of a firm of architects in Boston, which soon became one of the leading architectural firms in the United States. He designed many public and private structures, most of them in New England, and including many of the most notable modern educational buildings of that section.
Richardson ABBY SAGE, an American lecturer and writer on literary topics
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ABBY SAGE, an American lecturer and writer on literary topics; wife of Albert Deane Richardson; born in Massachusetts, in 1837. She first essayed the stage. Her publications include: "Stories from Old English Poetry" (1871); "The History of Our Country to 1876" (1876); "Familiar Talks on English Literature" (1881); "Old Love Letters" (1883); "Abelard and Heloise"; and a number of adaptations for the stage, principally from the French. She died in Rome, Italy, Dec. 5, 1900.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Of the seven Richardsons gathered here, only the novelist is described by more than one of these encyclopedias, and only he still has a general readership. Aiton's 1910 claim that Pamela was "the first modern English novel" is the one flat assertion the intervening century has undone: scholars now hand that title, if they hand it out at all, to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe of 1719 or push it back further to Aphra Behn, while Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (1957) recast Richardson as one founder among several. Collier's 1921 judgement that Clarissa, not Pamela, is the masterpiece has held up well; the million-word novel is still in print in an unabridged Penguin edition, and feminist critics from the 1970s onward took seriously the very thing Collier's condescended to, his "sustained analysis of secret spring and motive" in women. The remaining Richardsons on the page have shrunk to specialist interest, the fate of most shared-surname entries.
Written for this edition, 2026.