The first book-length monograph to examine Samuel Richardson's last and least-known work. Marks considers this novel a natural outgrowth and culmination of the conduct-book form -- indeed, the finest example of the genre.

After the Christmas vacation of 1805, Haydon began to attend the Academy classes, where he struck up a close friendship with John Jackson, afterwards a popular portrait-painter and Royal Academician, but then a student like himself. Jackson was the son of a village tailor in Yorkshire, and the protege of Lord Mulgrave and Sir George Beaumont. The two friends told each other their plans for the future, drew together in the evenings, and made their first life-studies from a friendly coalheaver whom they persuaded to sit to them. After a few months of hard work, Haydon was summoned home to take leave of his father, who was believed to be dying.

Dr. Chester W. Topp has spent 30 years compiling the definitive bibliography of over 25 publishers of Victorian Yellowbacks and Paperbacks. Based on his own extensive library of 1700 Yellowbacks and 1900 19th century paperbacks and an exhaustive search of every major trade and literary journal of the last century, this series of bibliographies represents a unique and major accomplishment in bibliographic studies in the tradition of Jacob Blanck, Michael Sadleir, Joseph Sabin and others.