Samuel Richardson
And The
Middle Class:
The Influence of Salisbury Court Social Dynamics Upon the Author and Printer
Fleet Street 18th century artwork
depicting a middle class family
It was in Salisbury Court that Richardson “successfully met the conditions of the eighteenth-century book trade and found the way to prosperity and an established social position, from which he could observe the most vital social problem of his age--the interpenetration of the emergent middle class and the surviving aristocracy” (Sale 1). Indeed, Richardson’s location at Salisbury Court was the most important factor in his ability to perceive the unique social dynamics of the middle class in eighteenth century London. Fleet Street geographically represented a transition in London from the more common City of London to the more aristocratic City of Westminster (“Fleet Street,” Wikipedia). Salisbury Court “was his world, this small square with innumerable smaller courts opening into it, located just off Fleet Street at whose top stood what Richardson called “the bar of Temple Bar,” separating the citizenry of London from the socially favored of Westminster” (Sale 4-5). Richardson’s location at Salisbury Court, located just off of Fleet Street, was a microcosm representing mixing of social classes characteristic of eighteenth-century London culture and society.
Fleet Street c. 1900
William M. Sale asserts that “The character of the inhabitants of Salisbury Court and its immediate environs had undergone a change between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries” (Sale 9). Sale explains that “Actors and men of letters who had made their residence in this section during the Restoration had given way to tradesmen and artisans” (Sale 9). Sale relates some of the types of people that would have lived and that did live at Salisbury Court during this time period:
When the Duke’s Theatre in Dorset Gardens was thriving, the locality had attracted such men as Betterton, Harris, Cave Underhill, and Sandford. Lady D’Avenant, widow of Sir William, had lived there after her husband’s death. From Dorset Court John Locke dated his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1689--the essay that was to be Pamela’s authority for the education of her children. Both Thomas Shadwell and John Dryden had lived in the neighborhood for a time; and at No. 13 Salisbury Court Samuel Pepys had been born. (Sale 9-10)
Plaque at Salisbury Court
The lower-class characters that were attracted to Salisbury Court, however, did not define Salisbury Court. Instead, by the time Richardson arrived there, the area was “an island of respectability,” with its occupants being mainly “innkeepers, clerks, doctors, attorneys, printers” (Sale 10).
John Senex was a bookseller at the Globe in Salisbury Court before he moved out into Fleet Street; Nicholas Blandford was a printer in the court in 1724; and in 1728 John Purser gave his address as Salisbury Court in the colophons of the Daily Journal. (Sale 10)
With such respectable businessmen living in Salisbury Court, as Sale notes, “it may clearly be seen that, despite the continued poverty and unsavory reputation of the smaller courts and alleys, Salisbury Court itself was acquiring a tone set by prospering middle-class Londoners” (Sale 11). Indeed, Richardson’s location at Salisbury Court placed him geographically between the commoners of London and the well-established aristocracy of the city at a point in history when many different classes of London were interacting at Salisbury Court. Thus, the emergence of the middle-class, a theme that Richardson weaves throughout his novels, was an effect of Richardson’s life at Salisbury Court.
Home | Salisbury Court | Biography | 18th Century Culture | Print Culture | The Pamela Media Event
Richardson and The Middle Class | The Epistolary Novel | Works Cited
Website created by Taylor Cooper, Emilee Johnson, and Jenny Plaster for Professor Tonya Howe
English 335, The 18th Century British Novel: Texts and Contexts, Washington and Lee University