Description

Henry Fielding, (1707-1754)
British writer, playwright and journalist, founder of the English Realistic school in literature with Samuel Richardson. Fielding’s career as a dramatist has been shadowed by his fame as a novelist, who undertook the duty of writing comic epic poems in prose – Fielding once described himself as “great, tattered bard.”
“When I’m not thanked at all, I’m thanked enough;
I’ve done my duty, and I’ve done no more.”
(from Tom Thumb the Great, 1730)
Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, Somerset. He was by birth a gentleman, close allied to the aristocracy. His father was a nephew of the 3th Earl of Denbigha, and mother was from a prominent family of lawyers. Fielding grew up on his parents farm at East Stour, Dotset. His mother died when Fielding was eleven, and when his father remarried, Henry was sent to Eton College (1719-1724), where he learned to love ancient Greek and Roman literature. During this period he also befriended George, later Lord, Lyttelton, and William Pitt, later Lord Chatham. To Lyttelton, his old school friend, who helped him from the late 1740s, Fielding dedicated the novel THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING (1749). After Eton, he attempted to elope with his cousin Sarah Andrew.
Encouraged by his cousin, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Fielding began his literary career in London. In 1728 he wrote two plays, of which LOVE IN SEVERAL MASQUES, performed at Drury Lane, ran only four nights. In the same year he went to the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, enlarging his knowledge of classical literature. After returning to England, he devoted himself to writing for the stage. Under the pseudonym ‘Sciblerus Secundus’ he wrote comic-satirical burlesques, which made him the most successful playwrigh for several years in the British theatre. Fielding also became a manager of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. In 1730 he had four plays produced, among them TOM THUMB, which is his most famous and popular drama, particularly in its revised version, THE TRAGEDY OF TRAGEDIES (1731). According to a story, it made Swift laugh for the second time in his life. In 1736 Fielding took over the management of the New Theatre, writing for it among others the satirical comedy PASQUIN. For several years Fielding’s life was happy and prosperous.
However, Fielding’s sharp burlesques satirizing the government gained the attention of the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole and Fielding’s activities in theater was ended by Theatrical Licensing Act – directed primarily at him. In search for an alternative career he became editor of the magazine Champion, an opposition journal. After studies of law Fielding was called in 1740 to the bar. Because of increasing illness – he suffered from gout and asthma – Fielding was eventually unable to continue as a Westminster justice. Physically Fielding was impressive, he was over six feet tall, with a “frame of a body large, and remarkably robust,” as his first biographer, Arthur Murphy recorded. He was also known as a man with a great appetite for food, alcohol and tobacco; the joys of the rich diet he celebrated in the song ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’.
Between the years 1729 and 1737 Fielding wrote 25 plays but he acclaimed critical notice with his novels, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, and THE HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURES OF JOSEPH ANDREWS (1742), a parody of Richardson’s Pamela (1740).
Although Fielding said in Tom Jones, “That monstrous animal, a husband and wife”, he married in 1734 Charlotte Cradock, who became his model for Sophia Western in Tom Jones and for the heroine of AMELIA, the author’s last novel. It was written according to Fielding “to promote the cause of virtue and to expose some of the most glaring evils, as well public as private, which at present infect the country…” In the story an army officer is imprisoned. His virtuous wife resists all temptations and stays faithful to him. With Charlotte Fielding enjoyed ten years of hap