Henry Fielding

A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighbouring squire, though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. But when his amorous escapades earn the disapproval of his benefactor, Tom is banished to make...

An accurate text of Shamela (Fielding's satire of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, the most popular epistolary novel of the eighteenth century) is included, as well as An Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men, selections from The Champion, and the Preface to The Adventures of David Simple. All of the texts are fully annotated. Backgrounds contains generous extracts from...

Fielding's comic masterpiece of 1749 was immediately attacked as A motley history of bastardism, fornication, and adultery. Indeed, his populous novel overflows with a marvellous assortment of prudes, whores, libertines, bumpkins, misanthropes, hypocrites, scoundrels, virgins, and all too fallible humanitarians. At the centre of one of the most ingenious plots in English fiction stands a hero whose actions were, in...