Fielding's first venture into prose fiction came a year previously with the publication in pamphlet form of Shamela, a travesty of, and direct response to, the stylistic failings and moral hypocrisy that Fielding saw in Richardson's Pamela. Richardson's epistolary tale of a resolute servant girl, armed only with her "virtue", battling against her master's attempts at seduction had become an overnight literary sensation in 1741. The implicit moral message — that a girl's chastity has eventual value as a commodity —, as well as the awkwardness of the epistolary form in dealing with ongoing events, and the triviality of the detail which the form necessitates, were some of the main targets of Fielding's parody.