Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Clarissa (1747/48) was a European literary event and continues to fascinate today due to its creation and transmission history marked by multiple revisions.

A German translation appeared already during the first English partial publications, with two more following by the end of the century. The textual comparison reconstructs, at key points of editorial philology, the path of the original through French intermediaries to the German translations and sheds light on the working methods and conditions of the translators.

In addition, translation theory, literary and book sociology, as well as intercultural aspects of literary life in the anglophile 18th century are taken into account.