IN April, 1848, the author of the present volume left England in company with Mr. A. R. Wallace on a joint expedition up the river Amazons, for the purpose of investigating the Natural History of the vast wood-region traversed by that mighty river and its numerous tributaries. Mr. Wallace returned to England after four years' stay, and was, we believe, unlucky enough to lose the greater part of his collections by the shipwreck of the vessel in which he had transmitted them to London. Mr. Bates prolonged his residence in the Amazon valley seven years after Mr. Wallace's departure, and did not revisit his native country again until 1859....

Samuel Richardson's first novel, Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded (1740) was a bestseller in its time. As its heroine became an icon of feminine virtue, so she also became the subject of vicious parody. Within its didactic account of a servant girl who resists her libidinous master, this brilliant epistolary novel creates high erotic and moral tension.