The real-life Jonathan Wild, gangland godfather and self-styled 'Thieftaker General', controlled much of the London underworld until he was executed for his crimes in 1725. Even during his lifetime his achievements attracted attention...

Henry Fielding wrote both Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela (1741) in response to Samuel Richardson's book Pamela (1740), of which Shamela is a splendidly bawdy travesty. Joseph Andrews begins as a parody, too, but soon outgrows its o...

DIVp'Kissing, Joseph, is but a Prologue to a Play. Can I believe a young Fellow of your Age and Complexion will be content with Kissing?'/Joseph Andrews/b, Henry Fielding's first full-length novel, depicts the many colourful and often...

Chronicles the romantic adventures of mysterious orphan Tom Jones, a reckless yet personable young man, as he falls in love with the unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of a neighboring squire, in an exuberant study of...

Tom Jones (1749) is rightly regarded as Fielding's greatest work, and one of the first and most influential of English novels. At the center of one of the most ingenious plots in English fiction stands a hero whose actions were, in 1...