Tom Jones

by Henry Fielding

Overview

Tom Jones is the ward of a liberal Somerset squire. He is a generous but slightly wild and feckless country boy with a weakness for young women. Misfortune, followed by many spirited adventures as he travels to London to seek his fortune, teach him a sort of wisdom to go with his essential good-heartedness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781853260216
Publisher:	Wordsworth Editions, Limited
Publication date:	12/01/1999
Series:	Classics Series
Pages:	768
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

A founder of the English novel along with Samuel Richardson and the creator of the novel of Realism, Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was one of the greatest novelists of the eighteenth century. His first play, Love in Several Masques, was produced in February 1728. He wrote and produced a number of plays ranging from comedies to dramatic satires. Critiquing the political ideologies and the unfair treatment of writers by theatres and publishing houses, Fielding’s plays were influential and critically received. He began writing novels at thirty-three. His greatest novel, Tom Jones, was published in February 1749. It is the first few English novels and is counted among the ten best novels of the world.

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CHAPTER I
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Tom Jones"
by .
Copyright © 2002 Henry Fielding.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
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What People are Saying About This

George Sherburn

Not the serious moral intention of the author, nor even the superb fusion of all elements, can fully account for the pleasure intelligent readers have found for two hundred years in reading Tom Jones. One must recognize as a supreme aid to the success of the book the fact that it is composed with confident directness and precision, and especially that it is written in healthy high spirits—that Fielding keenly enjoyed writing it.

Edward Gibbon

The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Upon my word, I think Tom Jones is one of the most perfect plots ever planned.

Editorial Reviews

Two hundred years have not dimmed Fielding’s realism. His humor is closer to our own than that of any writer before the present century.”—Kingsley Amis

From the Publisher