Clarissa – Samuel Richardson

"I am but a cipher, to give him significance."

Clarissa Harlowe, a virtuous young woman, is pressured by her family to marry a wealthy man she detests. She is tricked into running away with the rake Robert Lovelace, who imprisons her in a brothel and subjects her to a campaign of seduction and eventual violation. Clarissa refuses to marry her rapist, choosing instead a slow, saintly death as her ultimate act of defiance.

At over a million words, this is one of the longest and most tragic novels in the English language. It is a harrowing study of sexual violence and the integrity of the female will, painting Lovelace as one of literature's greatest villains.