Richardson is known as the inventor of the epistolary novel, which he developed while working on a collection of model letters, Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, on the Most Important Occasions, better known as Familiar Letters (1741). His three most famous works are all named after the sentimental heroes or heroines whose stories they relate. Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded (1740-1) tells of a virtuous servant who holds out against her employer's immodest advances until ultimately he rewards her with marriage. In Clarissa (1747-9), one of the best-loved novels of the eighteenth century, the heroine is locked up by her parents in an attempt to force her to marry a wealthy but abhorrent neighboring landowner. Rescued by Lovelace, a rakish local aristocrat, she is kept prisoner and subjected to his relentless advances and eventual rape before her prolonged and dramatic death. The eponymous and infinitely kind and virtuous hero of Richardson's History of Sir Charles Grandison (1754) rescues the heroine, Harriet Byron, after she has been abducted by an iniquitous nobleman. The Italian Clementina della Porretta is one of Harriet's rivals for the hero's affection.