Persuasion

Abstract

Abstract “Persuasion: Oratory and the Novel” opens by considering Adam Smith’s disparagement of Cicero for highlighting his own authority. While it is not clear that Samuel Richardson knew of Smith’s thinking at the time he was writing and publishing Clarissa, Smith’s discussion chimes with Richardson’s recessive authorship and promotion of the words of the characters themselves to centrality. Moreover, Richardson’s work as the printer of record for the House of Commons would have made him acquainted with the expansion of court reporting as Thomas Gurney launched it with shorthand in the Old Bailey, capturing the exact words of a range of different speakers. Shorthand technology, once a means for preserving the words of a few, became the means of preserving the exact words of many. It also forwarded Richardson in developing Clarissa as a high-water mark for the multi-voiced novel.