The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)
Comic epic of a good-hearted foundling, his rival Blifil and his love Sophia Western
Literature · Novelists
Henry Fielding
1707–1754 · English
Early English novel; comic and satirical fiction
Henry Fielding was a satirical playwright whose stage career was ended by the Licensing Act of 1737, after which he became a novelist and a reforming London magistrate. His comic masterpiece Tom Jones (1749) and Joseph Andrews (1742) made him, in Walter Scott's phrase, the father of the English novel; with his half-brother John he founded the Bow Street Runners.
How to spot them
- ▸Tom Jones, the foundling raised by Squire Allworthy, who loves Sophia Western
- ▸Joseph Andrews and Parson Adams; Shamela, a parody of Richardson's Pamela
- ▸Bow Street magistrate; founder of the Bow Street Runners with John Fielding
- ▸The novel as a 'comic epic poem in prose'
- ▸Died in Lisbon; Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon
Key works
Joseph Andrews (1742)
Begins as a parody of Pamela, following Pamela's virtuous brother and the unworldly Parson Adams
Shamela (1741)
Anonymous burlesque of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, exposing the heroine as a schemer
Amelia (1751)
His last and darkest novel, about a virtuous wife and her erring husband Captain Booth
Jonathan Wild (1743)
Ironic 'life' of the real thief-taker, satirising 'greatness' and Walpole
Tom Thumb (1730)
Burlesque of heroic tragedy, expanded as The Tragedy of Tragedies (1731)
The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755)
Posthumous account of his final journey in search of health
Key ideas
- Defined his fiction as a 'comic epic poem in prose'
- Omniscient, ironic narrator addressing the reader in essays that open each book of Tom Jones
- Rivalry with Samuel Richardson: robust comedy against sentimental, epistolary moralising
Quick-fire facts
- •Born at Sharpham Park, Somerset; educated at Eton
- •His political satires on Robert Walpole helped provoke the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737, ending his playwriting
- •Became a magistrate at Bow Street, London, in 1748
- •With his blind half-brother Sir John Fielding he established the Bow Street Runners
- •Tom Jones characters include Squire Western, Blifil, Partridge, Molly Seagrim and the tutors Thwackum and Square
- •Died in Lisbon in 1754 and is buried in the English Cemetery there
- •Tony Richardson's 1963 film of Tom Jones, starring Albert Finney, won the Oscar for Best Picture
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Henry Fielding
- Dinah Birch (ed.) — The Oxford Companion to English Literature