"Except by Clarissa Harlowe I was never so moved by a work of genius as by Othello. I read seventeen hours a day at Clarissa, and held the book so long up leaning on my elbows in an arm-chair, that I stopped the circulation and could not move. When Lovelace writes, "Dear Belton, it is all over, and Clarissa lives," I got up in a fury and wept like an infant, and cursed and d——d Lovelace till exhausted. This is the triumph of genius over the imagination and heart of its readers."
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Benjamin Haydon, journal entry (3 March 1813), quoted in Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter, From His Autobiography and Journals, Vol. I, ed. Tom Taylor (1853), p. 223
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Richardson
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Samuel Richardson
(19 August 1689 – 4 July 1761) was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He was one of the most admired fiction-writers of his day, both in his native England and across Europe. He is now considered one of the fathers of the novel.
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