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Henry Fielding

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Henry Fielding - Jonathan Wild

Henry Fielding (1707-1754). Etching from portrait sketch by William Hogarth (1697-1764), from The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great and A Journey from this World to the Next (1920). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Henry Fielding
Born April 22 1707(1707-Template:MONTHNUMBER-22)
Sharpham, Somerset, England
Died October 8 1754(1754-Template:MONTHNUMBER-08) (aged 47)
Lisbon, Portugal
Pen name "Captain Hercules Vinegar", also some works published anonymously
Occupation Novelist, dramatist
Nationality English
Period 1728–54
Genres satire, picaresque
Literary movement Enlightenment, Augustan Age
Relative(s) Sarah Fielding, John Fielding

Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 - 8 October 1754) was an English poet, novelist. and dramatist, best remembered as the author of the novel Tom Jones.

Life[]

Overview[]

Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury. His father was Gen. Edmund Fielding, descended from the earls of Denbigh and Desmond, and his mother was the daughter of Sir Henry Gould of Sharpham Park. His childhood was spent at East Stour, Dorset, and his education was received initially from a tutor, after which he was sent to Eton. Following a love affair with a young heiress at Lyme Regis he was sent to Leyden to study law, where he remained until his father, who had entered into a 2nd marriage, and who was an extravagant man, ceased to send his allowance. Thrown upon his own resources, he came to London and began to write light comedies and farces, of which during the next few years he threw off nearly a score. The drama, however, was not his true vein, and none of his pieces in this kind have survived, unless Tom Thumb, a burlesque upon his contemporary playwrights, be excepted. About 1735 he married Miss Charlotte Cradock, a beautiful and amiable girl to whom, though he gave her sufficient cause for forbearance, he was devotedly attached. She is the prototype of his "Amelia" and "Sophia." She brought him £1500, and the young couple retired to East Stour, where he had a small house inherited from his mother. The little fortune was, however, soon dissipated; and in a year he was back in London, where he formed a company of comedians, and managed a small theatre in the Haymarket. Here he produced successfully Pasquin, a Dramatic Satire on the Times, and The Historical Register for 1736, in which Walpole was satirised. This enterprise was brought to an end by the passing of the Licensing Act, 1737, making the imprimatur of the Lord Chamberlain necessary to the production of any play. Fielding thereupon read law at the Middle Temple, was called to the Bar in 1740, and went the Western Circuit. The same year saw the publication of Richardson's Pamela, which inspired Fielding with the idea of a parody, thus giving rise to his debut novel, Joseph Andrews. As, however, the characters, especially Parson Adams, developed in his hands, the original idea was laid aside, and the work assumed the form of a regular novel. It was published in 1742, and though sharing largely in the same qualities as its great successor, Tom Jones, its reception, though encouraging, was not phenomenally cordial. Immediately after this a heavy blow fell on Fielding in the death of his wife. The next few years were occupied with writing his Miscellanies, which contained, along with some essays and poems, 2 important works, A Journey from this World to the Next, and The History of Jonathan Wild the Great, a grave satire; and he also conducted 2 papers in support of the Government, The True Patriot and The Jacobite Journal, in consideration of which he was appointed Justice of the Peace for Middlesex and Westminster, and had a pension conferred upon him. In 1746 he set convention at defiance by marrying Mary MacDaniel, who had been his 1st wife's maid, and the nurse of his children, and who proved a faithful and affectionate companion. Fielding showed himself an upright, diligent, and efficient magistrate, and his Inquiry into the Increase of Robbers (1751), with suggested remedies, led to beneficial results. By this time, however, the publication of his great masterpiece, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), had given him a place among the immortals. His only other novel, Amelia, which some, but these a small minority, have regarded as his best, was published in 1751. His health was now thoroughly broken, and in 1753, as a forlorn hope, he went in search of restoration to Lisbon, where he died on October 8, and was buried in the English cemetery. His last work was a Journal of his voyage. Though with many weaknesses and serious faults, Fielding was fundamentally a man of honest and masculine character, and though improvident and reckless in his habits, especially in earlier life, he was affectionate in his domestic relations, and faithful and efficient in the performance of such public duties as he was called to discharge. Thackeray thus describes his appearance, "His figure was tall and stalwart, his face handsome, manly, and noble-looking; to the last days of his life he retained a grandeur of air and, though worn down by disease, his aspect and presence imposed respect upon people round about him."[1]

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.

Family, youth, education[]

Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, Somerset, on 22 April 1707. His father was Lieutenant Edmund Fielding, 3rd son of John Fielding, who was canon of Salisbury and 5th son of the earl of Desmond. The earl of Desmond belonged to the younger branch of the Denbigh family, who, until lately, were supposed to be connected with the Habsburgs.[2]

Henry Fielding’s mother was Sarah Gould, daughter of Sir Henry Gould, a judge of the king’s bench. It is probable that the marriage was not approved by her father, since, though she remained at Sharpham Park for some time after that event, his will provided that her husband should have nothing to do with a legacy of £3000 left her in 1710.[2]

About this date the Fieldings moved to East Stour in Dorset. 2 girls, Catherine and Ursula, had apparently been born at Sharpham Park; and 3 more, together with a son, Edmund, followed at East Stour. Sarah, the 3rd of the daughters, born November 1710, and afterwards the author of David Simple and other works, survived her brother.[2]

Fielding’s education up to his mother’s death, which took place in April 1718 at East Stour, seems to have been entrusted to a neighbouring clergyman, Mr Oliver of Motcombe, in whom tradition traces the uncouth lineaments of “Parson Trulliber” in Joseph Andrews. But he must have contrived, nevertheless, to prepare his pupil for Eton, to which place Fielding went about this date, probably as an oppidan. Little is known of his schooldays.[2]

There is no record of his name in the college lists; but, if we may believe his earliest biographer, Arthur Murphy, by no means an unimpeachable authority, he left 'uncommonly versed in the Greek authors, and an early master of the Latin classics,' — a statement which should perhaps be qualified by his own words to Sir Robert Walpole in 1730:—

“Tuscan and French are in my head;
Latin I write, and Greek — I read.”[2]

But he certainly made friends among his class-fellows — some of whom continued friends for life. Winnington and Hanbury-Williams were among these. The chief, however, and the most faithful, was George, afterwards Sir George, and later baron Lyttelton of Frankley.[2]

When Fielding left Eton is unknown. But in November 1725 we hear of him definitely in what seems like a characteristic escapade. He was staying at Lyme (in company with a trusty retainer, ready to “beat, maim or kill” in his young master’s behalf), and apparently bent on carrying off, if necessary by force, a local heiress, Miss Sarah Andrew, whose fluttered guardians promptly hurried her away, and married her to someone else (Athenaeum, 2nd June 1883). Her baffled admirer consoled himself by translating part of Juvenal’s 6th satire into verse as “all the Revenge taken by an injured Lover.”[2]

Playwright[]

After this he must have lived the usual life of a young man about town, and probably at this date improved the acquaintance of his 2nd cousin, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he inscribed his earliest comedy, Love in Several Masques, produced at Drury Lane in February 1728. The moment was not particularly favourable, since it succeeded Cibber’s Provok’d Husband, and was contemporary with Gay’s popular Beggar’s Opera.[2]

Almost immediately afterwards (March 16, 1728) Fielding entered himself as “Stud. Lit.” at Leiden University. He was still there in February 1729. But he had apparently left before the annual registration of February 1730, when his name is absent from the books (Macmillan’s Magazine, April 1907); and in January 1730 he brought out a 2nd comedy at the newly-opened theatre in Goodman’s Fields.[2] Like its predecessor, the Temple Beau was a work in the vein of Congreve and Wycherley, though, in a measure, an advance on Love in Several Masques.[3]

With the Temple Beau Fielding’s dramatic career definitely begins. His father had married again; and his Leiden career had been interrupted for lack of funds. Nominally, he was entitled to an allowance of £200 a year; but this (he was accustomed to say) “any body might pay that would.” Young, handsome, ardent and fond of pleasure, he began that career as a hand-to-mouth playwright around which so much legend has gathered, and gathers. Having — in his own words — no choice but to be a hackney coachman or a hackney writer, he chose the pen; and his inclinations, as well as his opportunities, led him to the stage.[3]

From 1730 to 1736 he rapidly brought out a large number of pieces, most of which had merit enough to secure their being acted, but not sufficient to earn a lasting reputation for their author.[3]

His chief successes, from a critical point of view, the Author’s Farce (1730) and Tom Thumb (1730, 1731), were burlesques; and he also was fortunate in 2 translations from Molière, the Mock Doctor (1732) and the Miser (1733). Of the rest (with a couple of exceptions, to be mentioned presently) the names need only be recorded. They are The Coffee-House Politician, a comedy (1730); The Letter Writers, a farce (1731); The Grub-Street Opera, a burlesque (1731); The Lottery, a farce (1732); The Modern Husband, a comedy (1732); The Covent Garden Tragedy, a burlesque (1732); The Old Debauchees, a comedy (1732); Deborah; or, a Wife for you all, an after-piece (1733); The Intriguing Chambermaid (from Regnard), a two-act comedy (1734); and Don Quixote in England, a comedy, which had been partly sketched at Leiden.[3]

Don Quixote was produced in 1734, and the list of plays may be here interrupted by an event of which the date has only recently been ascertained, namely, Fielding’s marriage on 28 November 1734 at St Mary, Charlcornbe, near Bath (Macmillan’s Magazine, April 1907), the lady being a Salisbury beauty, Miss Charlotte Cradock, of whom he had been an admirer, if not a suitor, as far back as 1730. This is a fact which should be taken into consideration in estimating the exact Bohemianism of his London life, for there is no doubt that he was devotedly attached to her.[3]

After a fresh farce entitled An Old Man taught Wisdom, and the comparative failure of a new comedy, The Universal Gallant, both produced early in 1735, he seems for a time to have retired with his bride, who came into £1500, to his old home at East Stour. Around this rural seclusion fiction has freely accreted. He is supposed to have lived for 3 years on the footing of a typical 18th-century country gentleman; to have kept a pack of hounds; to have put his servants into impossible yellow liveries; and generally, by profuse hospitality and reckless expenditure, to have made rapid duck and drake of Mrs Fielding’s modest legacy. Something of this is demonstrably false; much, grossly exaggerated. In any case, he was in London as late as February 1735 (the date of the “Preface” to The Universal Gallant); and early in March 1736 he was back again managing the Haymarket theatre with a so-called “Great Mogul’s Company of English Comedians.”[3]

Upon this new enterprise fortune, at the outset, seemed to smile. The earliest piece (produced on 5 March) was Pasquin, a Dramatick Satire on the Times (a piece akin in its plan to Buckingham’s Rehearsal), which contained, in addition to much admirable burlesque, a good deal of very direct criticism of the shameless political corruption of the Walpole era.[3]

Pasquin's success was unmistakable; and when, after bringing out the remarkable Fatal Curiosity of George Lillo, its author followed it up with the Historical Register for the Year 1736, of which the effrontery was even more daring than that of its predecessor, the ministry began to bethink themselves that matters were going too far. How they actually effected their object is obscure: but grounds were speedily concocted for the Licensing Act of 1737, which restricted the number of theatres, rendered the lord chamberlain’s licence an indispensable preliminary to stage representation, and — in a word — effectually put an end to Fielding’s career as a dramatist. Tumble-Down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds, Eurydice and Eurydice hissed are the names of 3 occasional pieces which belong to the last months of Fielding’s career as a Haymarket manager.[3]

Novelist and magistrate[]

By this date Fielding was 30, with a wife and daughter. As a means of support, he reverted to the profession of his maternal grandfather; and, in November 1737, he entered the Middle Temple, being described in the books of the society as “of East Stour in Dorset.” That he set himself strenuously to master his new profession, is admitted; though it is unlikely that he had entirely discarded the irregular habits which had grown upon him in his irresponsible bachelorhood.[3]

He also did a good deal of literary work, the best known of which is contained in the Champion, a “News-Journal” of the Spectator type undertaken with James Ralph, whose poem of “Night” is made notorious in the Dunciad. That the Champion was not without merit is undoubted; but the essay-type was for the moment out-worn, and neither Fielding nor his coadjutor could lend it fresh vitality. Fielding contributed papers from 15 November 1739 to 19 June 1740.[3]

On 20 June 1740 he was called to the bar, and occupied chambers in Pump Court. It is further related that, in the diligent pursuit of his calling, he travelled the Western Circuit, and attended the Wiltshire sessions.[3]

Although, with the Champion, he professed, for the time, to have relinquished periodical literature, he still wrote at intervals, a fact which, taken in connection with his past reputation as an effective satirist, probably led to his being “unjustly censured” for much that he never produced. But he certainly wrote a poem “Of True Greatness” (1741); a book I of a burlesque epic, the Vernoniad, prompted by Vernon’s expedition of 1739; a vision called the Opposition; and, perhaps, a political sermon entitled the Crisis (1741).[3]

Joseph Andrews had considerable success, and the exact sum paid for it by Andrew Millar, the publisher, according to the assignment now at South Kensington, was £183:11s., a witness being the author’s friend, William Young, popularly supposed to be the original of Parson Adams. It was with Young that Fielding undertook what, with exception of “a very small share” in the farce of Miss Lucy in Town (1742), constituted his next work, a translation of the Plutus of Aristophanes, which never seems to have justified any similar experiments.[4]

Another of his minor works was a Vindication of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (1742), then much before the public by reason of the Account of her Life which she had recently put forth. Later in the same year, Garrick applied to Fielding for a play; and a very early effort, The Wedding Day, was hastily patched together, and produced at Drury Lane in February 1743 with no great success. It was, however, included in Fielding’s next important publication, the 3 volumes of Miscellanies issued by subscription in the succeeding April. These also comprised some early poems, some essays, a Lucianic fragment entitled a Journey from this World to the Next, and, last but not least, occupying the entire final volume, the remarkable performance entitled the History of the Life of the late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great.[4]

Fielding's actual biography, both before and after Jonathan Wild, is obscure. There are evidences that he worked diligently at his profession; there are also evidences of sickness and embarrassment. He had become early a martyr to the malady of his century — gout — and the uncertainties of a precarious livelihood told grievously upon his beautiful wife, who eventually died of fever in his arms, leaving him for the time so stunned and bewildered by grief that his friends feared for his reason.[4]

For some years his published productions were unimportant. He wrote “Prefaces” to the David Simple of his sister Sarah in 1744 and 1747; and, in 1745–1746 and 1747–1748, produced 2 newspapers in the ministerial interest, the True Patriot and the Jacobite’s Journal, both of which are connected with, or derive from, the rebellion of 1745, and were doubtless, when they ceased, the pretext of a pension from the public service money (Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, “Introduction”).[4]

In November 1747 he married his wife’s maid, Mary Daniel, at St Bene’t’s, Paul’s Wharf; and in December 1748, by the interest of his old school-fellow, Lyttelton, he was made a principal justice of peace for Middlesex and Westminster, an office which put him in possession of a house in Bow Street, and £300 per annum “of the dirtiest money upon earth” (ibid.), which might have been more had he condescended to become what was known as a “trading” magistrate.[4]

For some time previously, while at Bath, Salisbury, Twickenham and other temporary resting-places, Fielding had intermittently occupied himself in composing his 2nd great novel, Tom Jones; or, the History of a Foundling. For this, in June 1748, Millar had paid him £600, to which he added £100 more in 1749. In the February of the latter year it was published with a dedication to Lyttelton, to whose financial assistance to the author during the composition it plainly bears witness.[4]

Meanwhile, its author was showing considerable activity in his magisterial duties. In May 1749, he was chosen chairman of quarter sessions for Westminster; and in June he delivered himself of a weighty charge to the grand jury. Besides other pamphlets, he produced a careful and still readable Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, &c. (1751), which, among its other merits, was not ineffectual in helping on the famous Gin Act of that year, a practical result to which the “Gin Lane” and “Beer Street” of his friend Hogarth also materially contributed.[4]

In 1749 he had been dangerously ill, and his health was visibly breaking. The £1000 which Millar is said to have given for Amelia must have been painfully earned.[5]

Early in 1752 his still indomitable energy prompted him to start a 3rd newspaper, the Covent Garden Journal, which ran from 4t January to 25 November. It is an interesting contemporary record, and throws a good deal of light on his Bow Street duties. But it has no great literary value, and it unhappily involved him in harassing and undignified hostilities with Smollett, Dr John Hill, Bonnell Thornton and other of his contemporaries..[5]

To the following year belong pamphlets on “Provision for the Poor,” and the case of the strange impostor, Elizabeth Canning (1734–1773)..[5]

By 1754 his own case, as regards health, had grown desperate; and he made matters worse by a gallant and successful attempt to break up a “gang of villains and cut-throats,” who had become the terror of the metropolis. This accomplished, he resigned his office to his half-brother John (afterwards Sir John) Fielding. But it was now too late. After fruitless essay both of Dr Ward’s specifics and the tar-water of Bishop Berkeley, it was felt that his sole chance of prolonging life lay in removal to a warmer climate..[5]

On 26 June 1754 he accordingly left his little country house at Fordhook, Ealing, for Lisbon, in the “Queen of Portugal,” Richard Veal master. The ship, as often, was tediously wind-bound, and the protracted discomforts of the sick man and his family are narrated at length in the touching posthumous tract entitled the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, which, with a fragment of a comment on Bolingbroke’s then recently issued essays, was published in February 1755 “for the Benefit of his [Fielding’s] Wife and Children.”.[5]

Reaching Lisbon at last in August 1754, he died there 2 months later (8th October), and was buried in the English cemetery..[5]

His estate, including the proceeds of a fair library, only covered his just debts (Athenaeum, 25th Nov. 1905); but his family, a daughter by his first, and two boys and a girl by his second wife, were faithfully cared for by his brother John, and by his friend Ralph Allen of Prior Park, Bath, the Squire Allworthy of Tom Jones. His will (undated) was printed in the Athenaeum for 1 February 1890..[5]

Far too much stress, it is now held, has been laid by his early biographers upon the unworshipful side of his early career. That he was always profuse, sanguine and more or less improvident, is as probable as that he was always manly, generous and sympathetic. But it is also plain that, in his later years, he did much, as father, friend and magistrate, to redeem the errors, real and imputed, of a too-youthful youth..[5]

An essay on Fielding’s life and writings is prefixed to Arthur Murphy’s edition of his works (1762), and short biographies have been written by Walter Scott and William Roscoe. There are also lives by Watson (1807), Lawrence (1855), Austin Dobson (“Men of Letters,” 1883, 1907) and G. M. Godden (1909). An annotated edition of the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon is included in the “World’s Classics” (1907)..[5]

Writing[]

Plays[]

Whether, had Fielding's career as a playwright been prolonged to its maturity, the result would have enriched the theatrical repertoire with a new species of burlesque, or reinforced it with fresh variations on the “wit-traps” of Wycherley and Congreve, is an inquiry more academic than profitable. What may be affirmed is, that Fielding’s plays, as we have them, exhibit abundant invention and ingenuity; that they are full of humour and high spirits; that, though they may have been hastily written, they were by no means thoughtlessly constructed; and that, in composing them, their author attentively considered either managerial hints, or the conditions of the market.[3]

Against this, we must set the fact that they are often immodest; and that, whatever their intrinsic merit, they have failed to rival in permanent popularity the work of inferior men. Fielding’s own conclusion was, “that he left off writing for the stage, when he ought to have begun” — which can only mean that he himself regarded his plays as the outcome of imitation rather than experience. They probably taught him how to construct Tom Jones; but whether he could ever have written a comedy at the level of that novel, can only be established by a comparison which it is impossible to make, namely, a comparison with Tom Jones of a comedy written at the same age, and in similar circumstances.[3]

Novels[]

As a playwright and essayist his rank is not elevated. But as a novelist his place is a definite one. If the Spectator is to be credited with foreshadowing the characters of the novel, Defoe with its earliest form, and Richardson with its first experiments in sentimental analysis, it is to Henry Fielding that we owe its first accurate delineation of contemporary manners. Neglecting, or practically neglecting, sentiment as unmanly, and relying chiefly on humour and ridicule, he set out to draw life precisely as he saw it around him, without blanks or dashes. He was, it may be, for a judicial moralist, too indulgent to some of its frailties, but he was merciless to its meaner vices. For reasons which have been already given, his high-water mark is Tom Jones, which has remained, and remains, a model in its way of the kind he inaugurated..[5]

A piece now known to have been attributed to him by his contemporaries (Hist. MSS. Comm., Rept. 12, App. Pt. ix., 204) is the pamphlet entitled An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, a clever but coarse attack upon the prurient side of Richardson’s Pamela, which had been issued in 1740, and was at the height of its popularity.[3]

Shamela followed early in 1741. Richardson, who was well acquainted with Fielding’s 4 sisters, at that date his neighbours at Hammersmith, confidently attributed it to Fielding (Corr. 1804, iv. 286, and unpublished letter at South Kensington); and there are suggestive points of internal evidence (such as the transformation of Pamela’s “MR B.” into “Mr Booby”) which tend to connect it with the future Joseph Andrews. Fielding, however, never acknowledged it, or referred to it; and a great deal has been laid to his charge that he never deserved (“Preface” to Miscellanies, 1743).

But whatever may be decided in regard to the authorship of Shamela,[3] it is quite possible that it prompted the more memorable Joseph Andrews, which made its appearance in February 1742, and concerning which there is no question.[4]

Professing, on his title-page, to imitate Cervantes, Fielding set out to cover Pamela with Homeric ridicule by transferring the heroine’s embarrassments to a hero, supposed to be her brother. Allied to this purpose was a collateral attack upon the slipshod Apology of playwright Colley Cibber, with whom, for obscure reasons, Fielding had long been at war. But the avowed object of the book fell speedily into the background as its author warmed to his theme. His secondary speedily became his primary characters, and Lady Booby and Joseph Andrews do not interest us now as much as Mrs Slipslop and Parson Adams — the latter an invention that ranges in literature with Sterne’s “Uncle Toby” and Goldsmith’s “Vicar.” Yet more than these and others equally admirable in their round veracity, is the writer’s penetrating outlook upon the frailties and failures of human nature.[4]

By the time he had reached his 2nd volume, he had convinced himself that he had inaugurated a new fashion of fiction; and in a “Preface” of exceptional ability, he announced his discovery. Postulating that the epic might be “comic” or “tragic,” prose or verse, he claimed to have achieved what he termed the “Comic Epos in Prose,” of which the action was “ludicrous” rather than “sublime,” and the personages selected from society at large, rather than the restricted ranks of conventional high life. His plan, it will be observed, was happily adapted to his gifts of humour, satire, and above all, irony. That it was matured when it began may perhaps be doubted, but it was certainly matured when it ended. Indeed, except for the plot, which, in his picaresque original idea, had not preceded the conception, Joseph Andrews has all the characteristics of Tom Jones, even (in part) to the initial chapters.[4]

It is probable that, in its composition, Jonathan Wild preceded Joseph Andrews. At all events it seems unlikely that Fielding would have followed up a success in a new line by an effort so entirely different in character. Taking for his ostensible hero a well-known thief-taker, who had been hanged in 1725, he proceeds to illustrate, by a mock-heroic account of his progress to Tyburn, the general proposition that greatness without goodness is no better than badness. He will not go so far as to say that all “Human Nature is Newgate with the Mask on”; but he evidently regards the description as fairly applicable to a good many so-called great people. Irony (and especially Irony neat) is not a popular form of rhetoric; and the remorseless pertinacity with which Fielding pursues his demonstration is to many readers discomforting and even distasteful. Yet Jonathan Wild has its softer pages; and as a purely intellectual conception it is not surpassed by any of the author’s works.[4]

In Tom Jones Fielding systematically developed the “new Province of Writing” he had discovered incidentally in Joseph Andrews. He paid closer attention to the construction and evolution of the plot; he elaborated the initial essays to each book which he had partly employed before; and he compressed into his work the flower and fruit of his 40 years’ experience of life.[4]

He has, indeed, no character quite up to the level of Parson Adams, but his Westerns and Partridges, his Allworthys and Blifils, have the inestimable gift of life. He makes no pretence to produce “models of perfection,” but pictures of ordinary humanity, rather perhaps in the rough than the polished, the natural than the artificial, and his desire is to do this with absolute truthfulness, neither extenuating nor disguising defects and shortcomings. One of the results of this unvarnished naturalism has been to attract more attention to certain of the episodes than their inventor ever intended. But that, in the manners of his time, he had chapter and verse for everything he drew is clear. His sincere purpose was, he declared, “to recommend goodness and innocence,” and his obvious aversions are vanity and hypocrisy. The methods of fiction have grown more sophisticated since his day, and other forms of literary egotism have taken the place of his once famous introductory essays, but the traces of Tom Jones are still discernible in most of our manlier modern fiction.[4]

His duties and preoccupations left their mark on his next fiction, Amelia (1752), which is rather more taken up with social problems and popular grievances than its forerunners. But the leading personage, in whom, as in the Sophia Western of Tom Jones, he reproduced the traits of his 1st wife, is certainly, as even Johnson admitted, “the most pleasing heroine of all the romances.” The minor characters, too, especially Dr Harrison and Colonel Bath, are equal to any in Tom Jones. The book nevertheless shows signs, not of failure but of fatigue,[4] perhaps of haste — a circumstance heightened by the absence of those “prolegomenous” chapters over which the author had lingered so lovingly in Tom Jones.[5]

Recognition[]

Henry Fielding grave

Fielding's grave in the cemetery of the Church of England (St. George's Church), Lisbon. Photo by Tó Lobato, 2009. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0), courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

At the English Cemetery in Lisbon, a monument was erected to Fielding in 1830. Luget Britannia gremio non dari fovere natum is inscribed upon it..[5]

There is a single absolutely authentic portrait of him, a familiar outline by Hogarth, executed from memory for Andrew Millar’s edition of his works in 1762. It is the likeness of a man broken by ill-health, and affords but faint indication of the handsome Harry Fielding who in his salad days “warmed both hands before the fire of life.”.[5]

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • The Masquerade: A poem. London: J. Roberts / A. Dodd, 1728.
  • The Vernon-iad: Done into English from the original Greek of Homer, lately found at Constantinople. 1741.

Plays[]

  • Love in Several Masques: A comedy. London: John Watts, 1728.
  • Rape upon Rape; or, The justice caught in his own trap: A comedy. London: John Watts, 1730.
  • The Temple Beau: A comedy. London: John Watts, 1730.
  • The Author's Farce, and The pleasure of the town (by "Scriblerus Secundus"). London: J. Roberts, 1730.
  • Tom Thumb: A tragedy (by "H. Scriblerus Secundus"). London: J. Roberts, 1730
    • also published as The Tragedy of Tragedies; or, The life and death of Tom Thumb the Great.London: J. Roberts, 1731.
  • The Letter Writers; or, A new way to keep the wife at home: A farce (by "Scriblerus Secundus"). London: J. Watts, 1731.
  • The Welsh Opera: or, The grey mare the better horse (by "Scriblerus Secundus"). London: E. Rayner, for H. Cook, 1731,
  • The Grub Street Opera. London: J. Roberts, 1731.
  • The Modern Husband: A comedy. London: J. Watts, 1732.
  • The Lottery: a farce. London: J. Watts, 1732.
  • The Covent Garden Tragedy. London: J. Watts, 1732.
  • Don Quixote in England: A comedy. London: J. Watts, 1734.
  • An Old Man Taught Wisdom; or, The virgin unmask'd: A farce. London: John Watts, 1735.
  • The Universal Gallant; or, The different husbands: a comedy. London: J. Watts, 1735.
  • Pasquin: A dramatick satire on the times. London: J. Watts: 1736.
  • Tumble-down Dick; or, Phaeton in the suds: A dramatick entertainment. London: J. Watts, 1736.
  • The Historical Register for the Year 1736; to which is added a very merry tragedy called Eurydice Hiss'd; or, A word to the wise. Edinburgh: J. Roberts, 1737.
  • Miss Lucy in Town; a sequel to the virgin unmasqued: A farce with songs. London: A. Millar, 1742.
  • Dramatic Works. (2 volumes), 1745; (3 volumes), London: A. Millar, 1755.
  • The Fathers; or, The good-natur'd man. London: T. Cadell, 1778.
  • Plays (edited by Thomas F Lockwood & JoAnn Taricani). Oxford, UK, & New York: Clarendon Press, 2004-2011.

Novels[]

Short fiction[]

  • A Dialogue between a Beau's Head and his Heels, Taken from their mouth as they were spoke at St. James's Coffeehouse. London: John Watts, 1731.
  • The Opposition: A vision. London: T. Cooper, 1742.
  • A dialogue between the Devil, the Pope and the Pretender. London: M. Cooper, 1745.
  • The Female Husband; or, The surprising history of Mrs Mary alias Mr George Hamilton, who was convicted of having married a young woman of Wells and lived with her as her husband, taken from her own mouth since her confinement. London: M. Cooper, 1746.
  • A Dialogue: Between a gentleman of London, agent for two Court candidates, and an honest alderman of the Country Party, earnestly address'd to the electors of Great Britain. London: M. Cooper, 1747.
  • The Female Husband, and other writings (edited by Claude Edward Jones). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1960.

Non-fiction[]

  • Of True Greatness: An epistle to the Right Honourable George Dodington esq. London: C. Corbett, 1741.
  • A full Vindication of the Dutchess Dowager of Marlborough: Both with regard to the account lately published by her Grace and to her character in general. London: J. Robert, 1742.
  • An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Hanover Rat. London: M. Cooper, 1744.
  • The History of the Present Rebellion in Scotland: Taken from the relation of James Macpherson, who was an eyewitness of the whole. London: M. Cooper, 1745.
  • A Serious Address to the People of Great Britain: In which the certain consequences of the present rebellion are fully demonstrated. London: M. Cooper, 1745.
  • A Proper Answer to a late Scurrilous Libel, entitled An apology for the conduct of a late celebrated second-rate minister. London: M. Cooper, 1747.
  • A charge Delivered to the Grand Jury: At the sessions of the peace held for the City and Liberty of Westminster. London: A. Millar, 1749.
  • A True State of the Case of Bosavern Penlez: Who suffered on account of the late riot in the Strand. London: A. Millar, 1749.
  • An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers. London: A. Millar, 1751.
  • A Plan of the Universal Register Office. London: 1751.
  • "Examples of the Interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of Murder: Containing above thirty cases in which this dreadful crime has been brought to light in the most extraordinary and miraculous manner; collected from various authors, ancient and modern. London: A. Millar, 1752.
  • A Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor: For amending their morals and for rendering them useful members of the society. London: A. Millar, 1753.
  • A Clear State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning: Who hath sworn that she was robbed and almost starved to death. London: A. Milar, 1753.
  • The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon. London: A. Millar, 1755.
  • Selected Essays (edited by Gordon Hall Gerould). Boston & New York: Ginn, 1905.
  • The True Patriot / The History of Our Times (edited by Miriam Austin Locke). University of Alabama Press, 1964.
  • The True Patriot, and related writings (edited by W.B. Coley). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987.
  • Contributions to The Champion, and related writings (edited by W.B. Coley). Oxford, UK, & New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Collected editions[]

  • Miscellanies. London: A. Millar, 1743; Dublin: S. Powell, for John Smith, 1743.
  • The Works. (8 volumes), London: A. Millar, 1762.
  • The Works. (12 volumes), London: W. Strahan / J. Rivington / S. Crowder / T. Longman / et al, 1783. Volume VII
  • Works (edited by Arthur Murphy). London: F.C. & J. Rivington, 1821.
  • Complete Works. London: Bell & Dalsy, 1869.
  • Miscellanies and Poems (edited by James P. Brown). London: Bicker, 1872.
  • Works (edited by Leslie Stephen). London: Smith, Elder, 1882.
  • Works. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press (Wesleyan Edition), 1967-

Translated[]

  • Moliere, The Mock Doctor; or, The dumb lady cur'd: A comedy. London: J. Watts, 1732.
  • The Miser: A comedy; taken from Plautus and Moliere. (1732). London: J. Watts, 1733.
  • The Intriguing Chambermaid: A comedy of two acts; taken from the French of Regnard. London: J. Watts, 1734.
  • Gustavus Adlerfeld, The Military History of Charles XII, King of Sweden; translated into English. (3 volumes), London: J. & P. Knapton, 1740.
  • Aristophanes, Plutus the God of Riches: A comedy, translated from the original Greek. London: T. Waller, 1742.
  • Ovid, Ovid's Art of Love: Paraphrased and adapted to the present time. London: M. Cooper / A. Dodd / G. Woodfall, 1747.

Edited[]

  • The Champion: Containing a series of papers, humourous, moral, political, and critical (journal; edited with James Ralph). London: J. Huggenson, 1741.
  • The Covent-Garden Journal – periodical, 1752
  • The True Patriot, and The history of our own times (journal). London: Mary Cooper, 1745-46
  • The Jacobite's Journal. London: M. Cooper / G. Woodfall, 1747-1748
    • The Jacobite's Journal, and related writings (edited by W.B. Coley). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1974.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[6]

The_Tragedy_of_Tragedies_by_Henry_Fielding

The Tragedy of Tragedies by Henry Fielding

See also[]

References[]

  • PD-icon Dobson, Austin (1911). "Fielding, Henry". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 324-327. . Wikisource, Web, Aug. 22, 2022.

Notes[]

  1. ↑ John William Cousin, "Fielding, Henry," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910, 137-138. Web, Jan. 12, 2018.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Dobson, 324.
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 Dobson, 325.
  4. ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 Dobson, 326.
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 Dobson, 327.
  6. ↑ Search results = au:Henry Fielding, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, June 18,2016.

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