HENRY FIELDING

22 April 1707 8 October 1754

Henry

Fielding

was

an

English

novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour

and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones.

Aside from his literary achievements, he has a significant place in the history of law-enforcement, having founded (with his half-brother John) what some have called London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, using his authority as a magistrate.

Fielding was born at Sharpham and was educated at Eton College, where he established a lifelong friendship with William Pitt the Elder. After a romantic episode with

a young woman that ended in his getting into trouble with

the law, he went to London where his literary career began. In 1728, he travelled to Leiden to study classics and law at the University. However, due to lack of money, he was obliged to return to London and he began writing

for the theatre, some of his work being savagely critical of

the contemporary government under Sir Robert Walpole.

His lack of financial sense meant that he

and his family often endured periods of

poverty, but he was helped by Ralph

Allen, a wealthy benefactor who later

formed the basis of Squire Allworthy

in Tom Jones. After Fielding's death,

Allen provided for the education and

support of his children.

Fielding never stopped writing political satire and satires of current arts and letters. The Tragedy of Tragedies was, for

example, quite successful as a printed play.

He also contributed a number of works to journals of the day. He wrote for Tory

periodicals, usually under the name of

"Captain Hercules Vinegar". During the late 1730s and early 1740s Fielding continued to air his liberal and antiJacobite views in satirical articles and

newspapers.

 Almost

by accident, in anger at the success

of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, Fielding took to writing novels in 1741 and his first major success was Shamela, an anonymous parody of Richardson's

melodramatic novel. It is a satire that follows the model of the famous Tory satirists of the

previous generation (Jonathan Swift and John

Gay, in particular).

He

followed

this

up

with Joseph Andrews (1742), an original work supposedly

dealing
brother,

with
Joseph.

Pamela's
Although

begun as a parody, this work developed into an

accomplished novel in its

own right and is considered

to mark Fielding's debut as a serious novelist.

In 1743, he published a novel in the Miscellanies volume III

(which was the first volume of the Miscellanies). This

was The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great. This novel is sometimes thought of as his first because he almost certainly began composing it before he wrote Shamela and Joseph Andrews. It is a satire of Walpole

that draws a parallel between Walpole and Jonathan Wild, the

infamous gang leader and highwayman. He implicitly compares the Whig party in Parliament with a gang of thieves

being run by Walpole, whose constant desire to be a "Great

Man" (a common epithet for Walpole) should culminate only in the antithesis of greatness: being hanged.

 His

anonymously-published The Female Husband (1746) is a fictionalized account of a notorious case in which a female transvestite was tried for duping another woman into marriage. Though a minor item in Fielding's total oeuvre, the subject is consistent with his ongoing preoccupation with fraud, sham, and masks. His greatest work was Tom Jones (1749), a meticulously constructed picaresque novel telling the convoluted and hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune.

THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING

The

History of Tom

Jones, a Foundling,
often known simply as Tom Jones, is

a comic novel by the English and playwright Henry

novelist

Fielding.

 The

novel is both a Bildungsroman and Picaresque

novel. First published on 28 February 1749, Tom

Jones is among the earliest English prose works

describable as a novel. The novel, totalling 346,747 words, is divided into 18 smaller books, each preceded by a discursive chapter, often on topics totally unrelated to the book itself. It is dedicated

to George Lyttleton.

Tom Jones is a foundling discovered on the property of a very kind, wealthy landowner, Squire Allworthy, in Somerset in England's West Country. Tom grows into a vigorous and lusty, yet honest and kind-hearted, youth. He develops affection for his neighbour's daughter, Sophia Western. On one hand, their love reflects the romantic comedy genre that was popular in 18th-century Britain. However, Tom's status as a bastard causes Sophia's father and Allworthy to oppose their love; this criticism of class friction in society acted as a biting social commentary. The inclusion of prostitution and sexual promiscuity in the plot was also original for its time, and the foundation for criticism of the book's "lowness."

The main theme of the novel is the contrast between Tom Jones' good nature, flawed but eventually corrected by his love for virtuous Sophia Western, and his halfbrother Blifil's hypocrisy. Secondary themes include several other examples of virtue (especially that of Squire Allworthy), hypocrisy (especially that of Thwackum) and just villainy (for example Mrs. Western, ensign Northerton), sometimes tempered by repentance (for instance Square, Mrs. Waters ne Jones).

Both introductory chapters to each book and interspersed commentary introduce a long line of further themes. For instance, introductory chapters dwell extensively on bad writers and critics, quite unrelated to the plot but apologetic to the author and the novel itself; and authorial commentary on several characters shows strong opposition to Methodism, calling it fanatical, heretical, and implying association of hypocrites, such as the younger Blifil, with it.

 The

novel takes place against the historical backdrop of the Forty-Five. Characters take different sides in the rebellion, which was an attempt to restore Roman Catholicism as the established religion of England and to undo the Glorious revolution. At one point Sophia Western is even mistaken for Jenny Cameron, the supposed lover of Bonnie Prince Charles. Goodnatured characters are often modestly loyalist and Anglican, even Hanoverian, while ill-natured characters (Mrs. Western) or only mistaken ones (Partridge) can be Jacobites or (like Squire Western) just anti-Hanoverians.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE LIFE OF MRS. SHAMELA ANDREWS

An

Apology for the Life of

Mrs. Shamela Andrews, or

simply Shamela, as it is more commonly known, is a satirical novel written by Henry Fielding and first published in April 1741 under the name of Mr. Conny Keyber.

Fielding never owned to writing

the work, but it is widely considered to be his. It is a direct attack on the then-popular novel Pamela (November 1740)

by Fielding's contemporary and

rival Samuel Richardson and is composed, like Pamela,

in epistolary form.

Shamela

was

originally

published

anonymously on 4 April 1741 and sold for one shilling and sixpence. A second edition came out on 3 November that same year which was partly reimpressed and partly reset where emendations were made. A pirated edition was printed in Dublin in 1741 as well. Reprint editions have subsequently appeared as texts for academic study.

Shamela is written as a shocking revelation of the true events which took place in the life of Pamela Andrews, the main heroine of Pamela. From Shamela we learn that, instead of being a kind, humble, and chaste servant-girl, Pamela (whose true name turns out to be Shamela) is in fact a wicked and lascivious creature, scheming to entrap her master, Squire Booby, into marriage.

 The

novel is a sustained parody of, and direct

response to, the stylistic failings and moral

hypocrisy

that

Fielding

saw

in

Richardson's Pamela.

Reading Shamela amounts to re-reading Pamela through a deforming magnifying glass;

Richardson's text is rewritten in a way that reveals its hidden implications, to subvert and desecrate it.

 Richardson's

epistolary tale of a resolute

servant girl, armed only with her 'virtue' to battle against her master's attempts at

seduction, had become an overnight literary sensation in 1741. The implicit moral message that a girl's chastity has eventual value as a commodity as well as the awkwardness of the epistolary form in dealing with ongoing events, and the triviality of the detail which the form

 Recent

criticism has explored the ways in

which Pamela in fact dramatises its own weaknesses. From this perspective, Fielding's work may be seen as a development of possibilities already encoded in Richardson's work, rather than a simple attack.

 Another

novel by Fielding

parodying Pamela, albeit not so explicitly, is The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his

Friend,

Mr.

Abraham

Adams (February 1742),

more commonly known

as Joseph Andrews.