Though the name Samuel Richardson might not sound that familiar to you now, he was actually the most famous author of his day. In fact, he was the first writer in history to write what we would now think of as a bestseller, and we'll get to what that book was and what made it so exciting a little bit later. That happened in 1740, and the novel was called Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded; that had a huge impact both on literature and literary culture in the 18th century and really after that as well.