a SERIES of FAMILIAR LETTERS FROM A Beautiful Young DAMSEL, To her PARENTS. Now first Published in order In order to cultivate the Principles of VIRTUE and RELIGION in the Minds of the YOUTH of BOTH SEXES. A Narrative which has its Foundation in TRUTH and NATURE; and at the same time that it agreeably entertains, by a Variety of _curious_ and _affecting_ INCIDENTS, is intirely divested of all those Images, which, in too many Pieces calculated for Amusement only, tend to _inflame_ the Minds they should _instruct_. In applying this test to _Pamela_, the author of _Pamela Censured_ displays a curious mixture of naivete and sophistication. His first attack involves a silly and perhaps consciously dishonest misreading of the words "Now first Published" on _Pamela's_ title page. While this phrase clearly means that Pamela's letters are now being published for the first time, _Pamela Censured_ attacks _Pamela_ for claiming to be the first work ever aimed at cultivating "the Principles of VIRTUE and RELIGION in the Minds of the YOUTH of BOTH SEXES." When _Pamela Censured_ later assails _Pamela_ for not telling a true story, as the title page advertises, it naively fails to understand that by the time of _Pamela's_ publication the guise of telling a true story had virtually become a fictional convention. But when _Pamela Censured_ considers the implications of _Pamela's_ fictionality, it raises two valid literary problems, treating the first in a cursory fashion and devoting to the second most of its space and attention. If, as _Pamela Censured_ first of all asserts, the "editor" of _Pamela_ is really the author, then all of the prefatory material in _Pamela_ must be seen as proof of the author's immorality: he is a man consumed by vanity. Secondly, this author must be convicted on even more serious moral grounds: his fiction instructs readers to sin and enflames those passions which he, as a moral man, should extinguish. Not only is this a clear moral flaw in the author and in his book, but it also blatantly contradicts the promises made on the title page.