Fielding, Henry 1707-54
English novelist

Born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, Somerset, he was educated at Eton. He went to London and in 1728 published a satirical poem, The Masquerade, and a comedy, Love in Several Masques. Thereafter he studied at the University of Leyden (1728-29), before returning to London, and in the space of eight years he wrote 25 dramatic pieces: light comedies, adaptations of Moli�re, farces, ballad operas, burlesques (including Tom Thumb), and a series of satires attacking Sir Robert Walpole and his government. This last prompted the introduction of the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 and effectively ended his career as a playwright and theatre manager (he had formed his own company, and was running the Little Theatre, Haymarket). He turned to the law, was admitted as a student at the Middle Temple, and was called to the Bar in 1740, but was hampered by his disabling gout. As a student he turned to journalism and edited The Champion (1739-41). Incensed by the publication of Samuel Richardson's prudish Pamela, he ridiculed it in a pseudonymous parody, An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews (1741). In 1742 came The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr Abraham Adams. The three volumes of Miscellanies (including The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great) followed in 1743. In the interim he caused a scandal by marrying Mary Daniel, the maid of his first wife, Mary Craddock (d.1744). He was made a justice of the peace for Westminster and Middlesex in 1748 and campaigned vigorously against legal corruption, helping his half-brother, Sir John Fielding (1721-80) to found the Bow Street Runners as an embryo detective force. In 1749 The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling was published to public acclaim, though its reception by some literary luminaries was unenthusiastic. Dr Johnson called it vicious and there were those who held it responsible for two earth tremors that shook London shortly after its publication. However, it has endured as one of the great comic and picaresque novels in the English language, and Coleridge thought the plot one of the three most perfect ever planned. He followed it with Amelia in 1751. In 1752 he was heavily involved with The Covent Garden Journal, which contains some of his most acerbic satire. During his last years, however, illness overtook him. He was still ardent in his fight against corruption but at the age of 45 he could not move without the help of crutches.

Bibliography: I P Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957); F H Dudden, Henry Fielding (2 vols, 1952)