An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, or Shamela, as it is more commonly known, is a satirical novel written by Henry Fielding and first published in April 1741 under the name of Mr. Conny Keyber. (Fielding never owned to writing the work but it is widely considered to be his.) It is a direct attack on the then-popular novel Pamela (November 1740) by Fielding's contemporary and rival, Samuel Richardson and is composed, like Pamela, in epistolary form.

Publishing History

Plot summary

Shamela is written as a shocking revelation of the true events which took place in the life of Pamela Andrews, the main heroine of Pamela. From Shamela we learn that, instead of being a kind, humble, and chaste servant-girl, Pamela (whose true name turns out to be Shamela) is in fact a wicked and lascivious creature, scheming to entrap her master, Squire Booby, into marriage. In this way Fielding exposes the multiple weaknesses of Richardson's work, and has a good laugh at them too, although recent criticism has explored the ways in which 'Pamela' in fact dramatizes its own weaknesses, in which context Fielding's work may be seen as a development of possibilities already encoded in Richardson's work, rather than a simple attack (see, for instance, Thomas Keymer). Another novel by Fielding parodying "Pamela", albeit not so explicitly, is The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr. Abraham Adams (February 1742) more commonly known as Joseph Andrews.

Footnotes

External Links

• Full text of An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews at Google Books