



Produced by Julie C. Sparks




CLARISSA HARLOWE

or the

HISTORY OF A YOUNG LADY

Nine Volumes

Volume I.


     Comprehending
     The most Important Concerns of Private Life.
     And particularly shewing,
     The Distresses that may attend the Misconduct
     Both of Parents and Children,
     In Relation to Marriage.




PREFACE


The following History is given in a series of letters, written
Principally in a double yet separate correspondence;

Between two young ladies of virtue and honor, bearing an inviolable
friendship for each other, and writing not merely for amusement, but
upon the most interesting subjects; in which every private family, more
or less, may find itself concerned; and,

Between two gentlemen of free lives; one of them glorying in his
talents for stratagem and invention, and communicating to the other, in
confidence, all the secret purposes of an intriguing head and resolute
heart.

But here it will be proper to observe, for the sake of such as may
apprehend hurt to the morals of youth, from the more freely-written
letters, that the gentlemen, though professed libertines as to the
female sex, and making it one of their wicked maxims, to keep no faith
with any of the individuals of it, who are thrown into their power,
are not, however, either infidels or scoffers; nor yet such as think
themselves freed from the observance of those other moral duties which
bind man to man.

On the contrary, it will be found, in the progress of the work, that
they very often make such reflections upon each other, and each upon
himself and his own actions, as reasonable beings must make, who
disbelieve not a future state of rewards and punishments, and who one
day propose to reform--one of them actually reforming, and by that means
giving an opportunity to censure the freedoms which fall