The longest novel in the English language tells, through letters, the story of Clarissa Harlowe, whose family pressures her to marry a man she despises, and who falls instead into the hands of the libertine Lovelace. Richardson took a year to write it; reading it takes nearly as long. The epistolary form creates an intimacy that feels almost invasive. Clarissa's fate is devastating and was controversial even then. The novel influenced every novelist who followed, from Fielding to Austen to the present. Its length is its point: suffering takes time.