According to Wikipedia: "Samuel Richardson (19 August 1689 4 July 1761) was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). Outside of his writing career, Richardson was an established printer and publisher for most of his life and printed almost 500 different works and various journals and magazines."