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  • Published: 1 October 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099511922
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 912
  • RRP: $29.99

The History of Tom Jones




One of the cleverest and funniest novels ever written, Tom Jones is Henry Fielding's greatest achievement.


One of the cleverest and funniest novels ever written, Tom Jones is Henry Fielding's greatest achievement.

Tom Jones, born a foundling, grown into a gallant and irresistible hero, romps through the English countryside getting himself into all kinds of trouble through his good nature and eye for the ladies. Betrayed by jealous relatives, Tom is exiled from home and must undergo a variety of trials and adventures in his quest to be reunited with his one true love and redeem himself in the eyes of society.

  • Published: 1 October 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099511922
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 912
  • RRP: $29.99

Other books in the series

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Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was born in 1707 at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury. He was educated privately at first and then at Eton. In 1725 he attempted to abduct an heiress and was bound over to keep the peace. He then went to London, where in 1728 he published a satirical poem, The Masquerade, and a comedy, Love in Several Masques.

From 1728 to 1729 he was a student of literature at Leyden University, returning to London in the autumn of the latter year. Between then and 1737 he wrote some twenty-five dramatic pieces, including comedies, adaptations of Molière, farces, ballad operas, burlesques and a series of topical satires, such as Pasquin and The Historical Register, which lampooned Sir Robert Walpole and his government.

It was partly because of this last play that Walpole introduced the Stage Licensing Act in 1737, which effectively ended Fielding's career as a dramatist. After this he embarked on a career in the law and was called to the Bar in 1740, but had little success as a barrister. In 1734 he married Charlotte Cradock, the model for Sophie Western and also for the heroine of his last novel, Amelia (1751).

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Praise for The History of Tom Jones

The plotting is complex, astonishing and perfect. It brims with good nature and generosity of spirit...it's full of jokes, suspense, cliffhangers, narrative reversals and pathos'

Jonathan Coe, Time Out

I think the Oedipus Tyrannus, The Alchemist, and Tom Jones, the three most perfect plots ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick room heated by stoves, into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

An exquisite picture of human manners

Edward Gibbon, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book. I am sorry to hear you have read it: a confession which no modest lady should ever make

Samuel Johnson talking about Tom Jones